pOUR YEARS 

OF 

[OVEL 



N^ 



R 



EADING. 



lyjOULTON. 



D. C. Heath & Co., Publishers. 



UBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
@i^|i iuit^risl^i f xt 

/V\4? 

UNITED STATES OF A3IERICA. 



FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL 

READING: AN ACCOUNT 
OF AN EXPERIMENT IN POPU- 
LARIZING THE STUDY OF 
FICTION 



EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY 

RICHARD G.'MOULTON, M.A., 

Ph.D. Professor of Literature in Eng- 
lish IN THE University of Chicago 




i^-^i'dA^. 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 
D. C. HEATH 8z CO., PUBLISHERS 

1895 



1 ■ 






Copyright, 1895, 
By K. G. Moulton. 



Electbotyplng bt c. J. Petees & SON, Boston, U.S.A. 



Fbesswobk by S. J. Paekhill & Ca 



CONTENTS 



Introduction : The Study of Fiction 1 

By Professob R. G. Moulton. 

The " Backavobth Classical Novel-Reading Union" . 17 
By its Secretary, Mr. Johx U. Barkow. 

Four Years' Work Done by the Union 29 

Representative Essays : — 

Why is Charles Dickens a More Famous Novelist 

THAN Charles Re ADE ? 43 

By Miss Ellen Compstox. 

The Character op Clara Middleton 59 

By Mr. Joseph Fairney. 

The Ideal of Asceticism /. 75 

By the Rev. C. G. Hall. 

Character Development in "Romola" .... 91 
By Mb. Thomas Dawson. 



2 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

If ever there might have been doubt about such coun- 
sel, it has ceased to be doubtful in the present day. 
Our great masters of the novel have been legion : from 
Miss Edgeworth and Jane Austen to George Eliot, 
Dickens, Thackeray, Reade, Kingsley, not to speak of 
the crowd of living novelists, some of whose master- 
pieces will not yield in rank even to the works of the 
greatest masters. Of the trinity who make the Bii Ma- 
jores of our modern epoch, Tennyson deals largely with 
fiction ; Browning's way is to weave a fictitious atmos- 
phere about a mere kernel of fact ; while William Morris 
— our English Homer — throws his whole literary mes- 
sage into the form of story. A similar predominance 
of fiction may be asserted of French and German litera- 
tures, so far as those literatures are read outside their 
native countries. And Russia is being admitted into 
the circle of great literary powers mainly on the 
strength of its novels. In such an age of fiction a vow 
of total abstinence is equivalent to a sentence of ex- 
communication from contact with the best minds. 

If we turn to the literature of the past, serious or 
light, it will appear that universality is more readily ob- 
tained by fictitious form than by any other device. The 
wisdom of primitive life has nearly all perished ; that 
which has been kept alive has for the most part the 
form of fables and legends. In the great ages, what 
name is more suggestive of literary dignity than the 
name of Plato? Yet Plato has presented his whole 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

philosophy in a fictitious setting, — imaginary dialogues 
in which the characters, plot, and movement are as care- 
fully elaborated as in an epic or drama. Higher au- 
thority yet may be quoted. Of the world's greatest 
Teacher, the one point of literary form which most 
impressed his contemporaries was his preference for 
fiction. "Without a parable spake he not unto 
them." 

Whence, then, has arisen the strong prejudice of our 
fathers against novels, and the fainter echo of it by our 
graver moralists of to-day ; while those who read fiction 
half apologize for what they put forward only as a re- 
laxation or venial indulgence ? 

There is a certain tell-tale phrase that usually comes 
up in discussions of the subject, — fiction is contemptible 
because it is all " made up." Has not real life, we are 
asked, difficulties enough and sorrows of its own, with- 
out our needinor to waste our tears on manufactured 
misery, or give precious time to persons and incidents 
which we know all the time never existed, but have 
been " made up " by a writer all out of his own 
head ? 

Fiction is objectionable, then, because it is " made up." 
Now, those who object most strongly are profound ad- 
mirers of physical science. But are not the experiments 
of the man of science all "made up"? and does not 
their whole value consist in the fact that they are ar- 
tificial substitutes of the investigator or expositor for 



4 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

actualities of nature that could not serve his purpose ? 
We are to be taught the behavior of two gases when 
tliey meet. If our teacher is to be limited to the phe- 
nomena as they actuall}^ are found in nature, he must 
convey liis audience perhaps to the bottom of the sea, 
or the interior of a floating cloud ; when he has got 
them there the process in question is so intermingled 
with other processes that none but the trained observer 
could tell what was going on. Instead of this he 
" makes up " an experiment. He fetches each of the 
gases away from all that in actual nature would sur- 
round them; he locks them up, most unnaturally, in 
separate retorts until lie is read}^ ; instead of waiting 
for a real change of weather, he most artificially brings 
them together by a spark from a manufactured battery ; 
and in an instant a truth is grasped by the simplest stu- 
dent which the cumbrous and involved processes of 
unassisted nature would have taken years to demon- 
strate, and even in years demonstrated only to the 
skilled observer. 

Now, fiction is the experimental side of human science. 
Literature, we know, is the criticism of life. But such 
branches of literature as history and biography are at a 
disadvantage, because they must, like the mere observer 
of physical nature, confine their critical survey to what 
has actually happened. The poet and novelist can go 
far beyond this. They can reach the very heart of 
things by contriving human experiments ; setting up. 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

however artificially, the exact conditions ana surround- 
ings that will give a vital clearness to their truth. 
Physical science stood still for ages while its method 
was limited to actual observation of nature ; it com- 
menced its rapid advance when modern times invented 
the idea of experiment. It is similarly not surprising 
that the literature of humanity should have failed to 
make itself felt upon the modern mind while directors 
of education granted dignity only to the records of fact. 
When education begins to give proper prominence to 
the experimental exposition of life which we call fiction, 
the humanities ma}'" be expected to spring forward to 
an equality with the best-equipped sciences and phi- 
losophies. 

It may be said boldly that fiction is truer than fact. 
Half the difference of opinion on the whole subject 
rests upon a mental confusion between the two things, 
fact and truth — fact, the mass of particular and indi- 
vidual details ; truth, that is of general and universal 
import — fact, the raw material; truth, the finished 
article into which it is to be made up, with hundreds of 
chances of flaws in the working. Place side by side a 
biography of John Smith and a biographic novel like 
Daniel Deronda or John Inglesant : the novel will be 
" truer " than the biogi-aphy, in the sense that it will 
contain more of " truth." However great and worthy 
John Smith may be, his life must include a large pro- 
portion of what is accidental, special to the individual. 



6 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

The biography must insert this because its fidelity is to 
the facts. But a George Eliot has no motive for intro- 
ducing anything that is not of general and universal 
significance. The biography will be the ore as it comes 
from the mine, gold and alloy mixed ; the novel will 
be pure gold. Even this is an understatement of the 
case. The hero of the novel is not an individual at all, 
but the type of a whole class ; not only will there be 
nothing accidental in the portrait, but in this one figure 
will be concentrated the essence of a hundred Daniel 
Derondas. The biography is the single specimen, and 
its gold is diluted with three times its weight of alloy ; 
the truer novel is gold only, and gold from a hundred 
mines. 

This contention that fiction is truer than fact will be 
called a paradox. But it is none the worse for that : a 
paradox is simply a truth standing on tiptoe to make 
itself seen ; once recognized, the truth may descend to 
plain statement. Stripped of paradoxical form our 
principle comes to this : fiction is truer — or falser — • 
than fact, but in any case more potent. Exposition by 
experiment may move along false lines, and buttress 
false theories. To handle facts is to look through 
plain glass, a mere transparent medium. Fiction is a 
lens that will concentrate, and the resultant picture 
will be attractive or repellent according as the lens is 
turned upon a landscape or a slum. Fiction will not 
lose its power to emphasize when it addresses itself to 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

undesirable matter. On the other hand, the literature 
of fact is always limited in impressiveness, without any 
compensating immunity from error. 

It is just here that another school of objectors make 
their stand. Tliey recognize to the fullest degree tlie 
force of fiction, but lament that in our actual social 
life fiction is a force for evil. And they think the 
case can be met by warning against bad fiction ; or at 
least by seeking to form a list of the ten or the hun- 
dred Best Novels, so that a natural appetite for fiction 
may be harmlessly gratified. 

With the basis of fact on which this position is 
grounded it is impossible not to sympathize. The 
vast proportion of the novel-reading that actually goes 
on in our midst has no title to the present defence 
of fiction. If we analyze it, it will seem to be, to a 
great extent, the intrusion of the universal gambling 
spirit into literature. What betting or euchre ai-e to 
the men's club, that novels are to the ladies' boudoir. 
The pleasure of gambling lies in an intoxicating pro- 
longation of uncertainty in a matter where there is 
interest without the power of control. So what gets 
the typical novel read is the long-drawn-out uncertainty 
whether Clarissa is to be married or buried in the last 
chapter, with a delicious off-chance (if Mr. Hardy be 
the novelist) tliat she may even come to be hanged. 
The matter admits of an easy test — what percentage of 
our novel-readers have ever read a novel twice ? We 



8 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

all want to see a good picture ten times and more ;. 
I those to whom fiction is one of the fine arts will be able 
to produce their list of stories read five, six, ten times. 
The value of a novel increases with the square of the 
number of times it has been read. \ 

Or, again, a good deal of novel-reading is literary 
gossip and literary fashion. The elegant among us will 
read, not only stories, but the reviews of them ; appar- 
ently not for the purpose for which reviews exist, but 
from the strange fascination that possesses many minds 
for catching up something that somebody says about 
some work, and quickly passing it on, not only without 
thinking about the remark, but without the least idea 
of reading the work to which it refers. Current fiction 
stands second only to social scandal as material for 
flying gossip. Others are impelled by an anxiety to be 
up to date. Just as in dress or house arrangement they 
buy things, not because they are good, nor for the excel- 
lent reason that they like them, but mainly because 
they are the fashion, so they will blush to confess that 
they have not read Dodo^ while feeling no discomfort 
at not having read Dante. 

Readers who suspect in themselves infirmities of this 
kind in their attitude to fiction should prescribe to 
themselves a self-denying ordinance by which they 
should read nothing that is not ten years old. In 
such a practice they would find a sifting machinery 
stronger than a host of reviews. 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

Our objectors are right, then, in their facts, but wrong, 
surely, in the remedy they think to apply. Education 
by Index Expurgatorius has never succeeded. The 
institution of Novels Laureate, we may be sure, would 
make little headway against the keen pleasure of free 
choice. It is a case for reform ; but the change needs 
to be made, not in the books, but in the readers. 

The practical issue to which these considerations 
lead up is that taste in fiction needs training. The 
literature of fact is easy; all creative art involves a 
receptivity prepared by cultivation. Two men are 
seated side by side on a promenade, listening to the 
music of the band. To the one there is no difference 
between the popular polka and the adagio from a 
Beethoven symphony ; they are simply successive items 
in an evening's entertainment. To the man seated by 
him, the two pieces are Avide as the poles asunder; the 
one gives a moment's amusement, by the other his 
whole soul is called out, and he feels himself in con- 
verse with giants of the world of mind. Yet the 
music was the same for both hearers ; the difference 
was made by the training of the ear. \ Cultivation does 
the same for fiction. The very novel that one man 
reads to keep off ennui till dinner shall be ready, 
when read by another, and a trained reader, fills his 
soul with a sense of artistic beauty, and makes him 
long to be good. If novel-reading, taken as a whole, 
has been a curse rather than a blessing, the fault lies, 



10 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

not in our authors, but in our distorted educational 
system, which insists upon careful training in mathe- 
matics, or language, or physical science, — subjects 
comparatively easy and remote from life, — yet leaves 
literature, most difficult and vital of all studies, to 
take care of itself. In this matter, surely, we may 
take our moral censors with us. Fiction is going to 
be read, whether they like it or not; but they may 
attain the object at which they are really aiming, if 
they turn their energy into the channel of demanding 
that preliminary training which will determine whether 
fiction shall be a dissipation or a mental and moral 
food. 

But how is this cultivation to be attained? Not, 
surely, by the reading of reviews. Who could think 
of getting an ear for music by reading reports of 
concerts in the musical columns of the press ? We 
know we can be trained in music only by hearing the 
music itself. Taste in fiction can be cultivated only 
by reading and re-reading the works of the great 
masters, with docile attention always, and sometimes 
with distinct effort and study. I am not speaking 
of the professed student, with leisure and means to 
use the machinery of university education to assist 
him in developing his receptive powers. But the 
busy men and women, to whom literature can never 
be anything else than recreation, may make their re- 
creation productive, if they are willing to invest in it 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

a little of the mental capital we call study. The 
practical problem is to find modes of studying fiction 
such as will fit themselves into the routine of ordinary 
busy life. 

The object of the present book is to introduce a 
little experiment that has been made in this matter 
of popularizing the study of fiction. It has been 
tried in a mining village of Northumberland (Eng- 
land), and in spite of limitations of leisure and social 
opportunity it has flourished long enough to present 
" four years of novel-reading." The pages that follow 
will speak for themselves; here it is enough to say, 
that the plan consists in the reading, by all the mem- 
bers of this "Classical Novel-Reading Union," of the 
same novel at the same period, while the announcement 
of the novel to be read is accompanied with sugges- 
tions, coming from some " literary authority," of some 
one or two "points to be noted" in the book. The 
scheme includes meetings for discussing the novel and 
reading essays; but its essence lies in the two things 
I have mentioned, — simultaneous reading, and read- 
ing in the light of an expert's suggestions as to im- 
portant points. The history of this novel-reading 
union is sketched below by its secretary, and a record 
follows of the work done. It cannot but be interest- 
ing to note the works selected, the ideas they have 
called out, and especially the suggestions made by 
those who have been consulted as literary authorities. 



12 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING, 

It is interesting, again, to note that this list of literary 
authorities includes, not only local friends, or those 
whose work is education, but sometimes novelists of 
such rank as Mr. Justin McCarthy, Miss Peard, and 
the author of John Inglesant. A few representative 
essays are added, selected from those read at meetings 
of the Union. They reflect only the opinions of the 
individual writers ; but they will add to the general 
interest of the jDresent volume. 

The reader will understand that what is here in- 
troduced is not put forward as a model method of 
studying fiction. It is too early to talk of models ; 
fiction-study is in the tentative stage, and only experi- 
ment is possible ; what is here done is to record an 
experiment. It is an experiment that can be tried on 
a larger scale by the formation of similar unions, or 
on a smaller scale by a few friends reading together; 
while isolated readers can join this or similar societies 
at a distance, and gain the major part of the advan- 
tages of the plan. Without going farther, the four 
years' experience here presented will afford a not in- 
considerable training in novel-reading to any who may 
try to follow it. I will add, that if any readers 
of these pages are induced to try for themselves 
the plan here described, or any other plan suggested 
by it, and would find some means of making pub- 
lic their experience in the matter, they would be 
doing good service in helping towards that compari- 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

son of experiments which leads up to the survival 
of the fittest method. Whether it be by the union of 
several students in a society, or by the individual 
efforts of isolated readers, in some way the regular 
study of fiction must be set on foot. And this study 
of fiction will be, in its highest form, the study of 
life. 

R. G. MOULTON. 



FOUR YEARS OF NOYEL-READING 



THE BACKWORTH 
CLASSICAL NOVEL-READING UNION 



^-^^ t^ V 




■^^^-^"-^^ 



BACKWORTH 
CLASSICAL NOVEL-READING UNION 



A BRIEF HISTORY 

Backwoeth forms part of a group of mining villages 
lying near to a north-eastern headland of the German 
Ocean, and is one of the many small industrial centres 
spreading like net-work throughout the great mining 
county of Northumberland. If any evidence were re- 
quired of the immense improvement in industrial con- 
ditions, and of the general progress of the mining class, 
in this part of England, it would only be necessary to 
contrast Backworth with some of the older minings vil- 
lages, decaying remnants of which are to be found, 
where active industry is no longer in progress. Its im- 
proved dwellings, commodious board schools, flourish- 
ing co-operative society, popular workmen's institute, 
and a number of other interests and advantages, are so 
many proofs of its general prosperity and happiness as 
compared with the life and conditions prevailing in 
mining communities thirty years ago. 

When the great movement of University Extension 

17 



18 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

was conceived and began its benignant career, it was 
almost natural that its earliest missionaries should find 
their way to Northumberland. Backworth, with many- 
other places, associated itself with the scheme in these 
early days ; but to BackAvorth alone belongs the dis- 
tinction of having maintained an almost unbroken at- 
tachment for many years. It was during a course of 
University Extension lectures that the movement to 
which this brief history relates first took definite shape, 
and the "■ Classical Novel-Reading Union " had its 
birth. » 

The first course of lectures of a purely literary nature 
was delivered in the spring of 1890, and among other 
lessons taught was the importance of fiction as a whole- 
some and educational influence. It Avas soon discovered 
that although Backworth read fiction, it was not fiction 
of the best class ; and there was no systematic study of 
the best works of the best authors, and scanty knowl- 
edge of the great classics of fiction which are among 
life's best text-books. This course of lectures was one 
of the most successful ever held in Backworth. It was 
followed by deep and intelligent interest, and awoke 
in many the first perceptions of the great educational 
value of literature ; and when it was suggested that a 
society should be formed, the object of which should be 
the study of classical fiction, the project was received 
with an appreciation closely allied to enthusiasm. 

The idea having been adopted, the principle, purpose, 



BACKWORTH NOVEL-READING UNION. 19 

and plan of operation of the proposed society, were 
embodied in a circular as follows : — 

Principle. 

Literature is the science of life ; and the great 
classical novels are among the best text-books of life. 
To study these is the true antidote to trashy and poi- 
sonous fiction. 

Purpose. 

The purpose of the Union is to encourage a course 
of systematic novel-reading, (1) at the rate of a 
novel a month ; (2) to be taken up by ordinary read- 
ers and students, the former reading and talking about 
the novels, the latter meeting to discuss and do work. 

Plan of Operation. 

1. A post-card will be sent to every member at the 
beginning of the month announcing, («) the novel 
chosen for the month ; (b) a very brief suggestion from 
some competent literary authority of some leading 
points to be kept in view during the reading of the 
work ; (c) the date and business of the first meeting. 

2. All joining the Union undertake to read during 
the month the novel selected, and from time to time 
endeavor to turn conversation upon it. 

3. All members are invited to attend, and (if they 
like) take part in the meetings of the Union. At the 
same time it is fidly recognized that many more will 
undertake the reading than those able to attend the 
meetings or do work. 

4. The business of the meetings will be, (1) the 
reading and discussion of papers (especially upon 
subjects connected with the suggestions made by the 



20 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

literary authority) ; (2) discussion of difficulties or 
queries started by members; or (3) formal debates 
upon questions arising out of the novel of the month. 

5. There will be one meeting in the earlier half of 
each month ; others during the month (if found desir- 
able), by adjournment from the first, or by the appoint- 
ment of the council. If practicable, meetings shall be 
held in various places in the district. 

Membership and Government. 

1. The membership shall include local and distant 
members, the only pledge required being that they 
shall read the book selected for the month. 

2. The Union to be governed by a president, vice- 
presidents, secretary, and a council of six, to be elected 
annually. 

The chief duty of the latter shall be the selection 
of novels, and general oversight in the work of the 
Union. 

These circulars were distributed throughout the dis- 
trict prior to the last lecture of the course, at which it 
was announced that a supply of post-cards had been 
provided, by which intending members might notify 
the secretary of their desire to become members of 
the " Backworth and District Classical Novel-Reading 
Union." Three weeks from the date of this meeting 
the membership stood at forty-six ; and with this num- 
ber a start was made with the first novel for the month 
of May. The chief agent of the colliery undertook the 
presidency, a number of gentlemen — including the two 
parliamentary representatives of the miners — accepted 



BACKWORTH NOVEL-READING UNION. 21 

the vice-presidency, and a representative council was 
elected to control the business of the society. The 
room of the local Students' Association was selected 
as the place of meeting, and the printing of post-cards, 
etc., was to be done with a small hand printing-press, 
the property of the same body. A list of six novelists 
was drawn up, — Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, Kingsley, 
Ly tton, and " George Eliot ; " and the secretary was 
instructed to make application to competent literary au- 
thorities for suggestions or " points to be noted " in any 
work of these authors. Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit 
was tlie first book read by the Union, and fully bore 
out the interest anticipated in the formation of the so- 
ciety. 

During tlie months which ensued, additions were 
steadily made to the membership, until in six months it 
had reached eighty-seven, nearl}^ double the number at 
the beginning. These were not entirely local members. 
The local press had published accounts of the formation 
of the Union, and induced many living at a distance to 
make application for membership ; and about one-third 
of the membership at this time was drawn from persons 
living at a distance. It was urged that local unions 
might be formed by these in their own districts ; but 
it was felt that the experience of the first year of the 
Backworth enterprise might be useful before steps 
were taken in this direction. 

And now, with a few months' experience, weak places 



22 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

were discovered in the general plan of operation, and 
these finally developed into considerable difficulties. 

Three main points were brought up for the considera- 
tion of a special meeting : — 

1. It Avas felt that a month was too short a time to read 

the novels thoroughly. 

2. lAterar}' autliorities did not respond readily. 

3. Members were unwilling to commit themselves to do 

any work until they had read the book, and thus 
essays and debates did not prosper. 

At this specially convened meeting the following- 
amendments were made to the constitution: — 

1. Two months was to be the time allotted for reading 

the novel. 

2. University Extension lecturers were to be added to 

the list of literary authorities. 

3. A meeting was to be held at the end of the first 

month for the arrangement of essays, debates, 
etc., when it was hoped that members having some 
knowledge of the book would feel themselves more 
competent to undertake the work. 

These changes no doubt represent a very considerable 
departure from the original plan of the Union, but it is 
only necessar}- to point out that they in no way inter- 
fered Avith the principle of the society. The earlier 
plan was necessarily tentative ; and from the fact 
that the sclieme originated in a mining district, with 
all its busy interests, and consequently limited lei- 



BACKWORTH NOVEL-READING UNION, 23 

sure for the purposes of the Union, any adaptation to 
meet local requirements does not presume want of suc- 
cess. For a district with more leisure, a wider acquaint- 
ance with books, and greater educational facilities, the 
original plan is worthy of consideration, and would no 
doubt be practicable, and for this reason has been in- 
cluded in extetiso in these notes. Backworth, however, 
found the change beneficial, and the society exists on 
these lines to-day. The longer time allotted gives 
greater opportunity for thorough reading. Literary sug- 
gestions are more easily obtained from those who know 
or have heard of Backworth as a successful University 
Extension centre. And the knowledge obtained in the 
first month's reading enables members to undertake 
definite work in the shape of an essay, or the negative 
or affirmative in a debate. 

From the date of tlie acceptance of these changes in 
the constitution and administration of the Union pro- 
gress lias been slow, but certain. It was inevitable that 
some should enter the society with mistaken views as 
to its object and purpose, with nothing more than a 
curious interest in its actual working, and with little or 
no sympathy for the definite principles of the society. 
Like the poor, these are always with us. But although 
our increase has been largely discounted by a correspond- 
ing decrease due to a variety of causes (personal and 
local), and by the process of weeding out those indiffer- 
ent to the pledge of membership, we have been able to 



24 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

maintain a sound bod}^ of members numbering eighty- 
three, that are in full sympathy with the objects of the 
institution, and faithful to its pledge and purpose. A 
uniform subscription of one shilling per member, payable 
on entrance, is sufficient to meet all the expenses of the 
Union. Members provide their own books, either by 
loan or purchase ; or sometimes, in the case of a group 
of students, by mutual purchase — each member ob- 
taining the use of the book in turn, while it is finally 
disposed of to the members in rotation. 

At the end of the first month an informal discussion 
takes place on the points to be noted, and subjects are 
set for essay and debate. The latter are not alwaj-s 
accepted, members selecting their subjects according to 
their individual tastes, but always with due regard to 
the particular book under discussion. Occasionally 
papers are given at this meeting, which might be called 
supplementary papers, as they often deal with subjects 
previously discussed, and are brought forward when a 
debate or essay has not covered the whole subject 
from the writer's point of view. Distant members con- 
tribute papers to the general meeting, and at their own 
request have the papers of local members sent to them. 
With a larger society, and special means at our com- 
mand, every member would be provided with a copy, 
or at least a precis., of the proceedings at the general 
meeting. 

An annual report is issued by the secretary, in which 



BACK WORTH NOVEL-READING UNION. 25 

membership, work clone, finance, and future prospects 
are discussed ; and each member is supplied with a 
copy of this report, from which may be gathered the 
general progress of the society. 

This is a brief outline of the " Novel-Reading Union " 
as it at present exists; and some idea of its work and 
usefulness may be seen in the following table : — 

Books Read 20 

Papers Given 54 

Meetings Held 34 

The list of authors has been extended, taking in 
Victor Hugo, Charles Reade, George Meredith, Mrs. 
Gaskell, Eugene Sue, Charlotte Bronte, etc. ; and the 
great woi-ks of these great authors have been a con- 
stant source of pleasure to those privileged to read 
them under the guidance of skilled literary advisers. 
Nor has the work been one of pleasure alone. The 
avowed principle upon which the Union is based is 
to make fiction, which contains some of the best 
thinking of the age, not only a pleasant, but an educa- 
tional pursuit ; to neutralize the trashy and pernicious 
literature which abounds in these days of cheap books, 
and to train earnest students, not only in the best 
thought, but in the literary ways and methods of the 
best novelists. It is sometimes urged against our 
scheme, that it deals only with one department of 
literature to the exclusion of others equally interest- 



26 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

ing, and possibly more profitable. The use of this 
argument implies forge tfulness of the root idea of the 
Union. It does not concern itself with the literary 
tastes of members, except in so far as these tastes 
incline to fiction. We assume that fiction has some 
place in the reading of every one who reads at all. 
We fix this occasional reading at the rate of a novel 
in tw^o months, and ask that the reading be syste- 
matically done, and educational in purpose. It is no 
part of our plan to provide pleasure without profit, 
and it cannot be too clearly emphasized that the 
Union is not merely a recreative organization. 

One remark may be added. It has constantl}^ been 
urged upon us from outside, that our local effort 
would be a service to literary study in general, be- 
cause it would be pioneering with a view to discover 
a practical method of systematically studying fiction, 
which, when once discovered and tested by experi- 
ence, would probably be adopted elsewhere. This has 
been done at such places as London and Exeter ; and 
a further result of this local effort may be seen in 
the larger place given to fiction in the programmes 
of the numerous debating societies, in both town and 
country, and in the general consent wliich has been 
accorded to the idea that the importance of the novel 
as a vehicle of thought, and its influence in liftx are 
such as to justify special study and organization. 

J. U. BARKOW. 



FOUR YEARS' WORK 

.^ DONE BY 

THE BACKWORTH CLASSICAL NOVEL- 
READING UNION - 



WORK DONE BY THE C. N. R. U. 



FIRST NOVEL 

Martin Chuzzlewit, by Charles Dickens. 
Points to be noted (swjijcsted by Prof. R. G. 2Ioulton). 

1. Four different types of selfishness, — Old Martin, Young 

Martin, Antony, and Pecksniff. 

2. Four different types of unselfishness, — Mary, Mark Tapley, 

Old Chuffey, and Tom Pinch. 

Debate. — That the two swindles in the story (Scadder's Land 
Office and the Englisli Insurance Company) are incon- 
ceivable. 

Essays. 

1. Is Mark Tapley's character overdrawn ? 

2. Changes in the characters of the book from Selfishness to 

Unselfishness. 
Difficulty Eaised. — How could Tom Pinch go so long undeceived 
in Pecksniff ? 

SECOXD XOVEL 

Anne of Geierstein, by Sir Walter Scott. 
Point to be noted {suggested by Prof. R. G. Moulton). 

The supernatural element in the story ; how much is 
intended to be real ? how much self-deception ? how much 
imposture '? 
Debate. — Was the Vehme-Gericht, as described by Scott, a right- 
eous institution '? 
Essay. — The character of Burgundy as painted in another novel 

of Scott's. 
Difficulty Raised. — How could such daughters come of such 
fathers — as Anne and Queen Margaret, of Count Albert and 
King Rene ? 

29 



30 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

THIRD NOVEL 

A Tale of Tw^o Cities, by Charles Dickens 
Point to be noted (suggested by Justin McCarthy^ Esq., M.P.). 

The author's description of a French mob in this novel 
contrasted with his description of an English mob in Barnaby 
Budge. 

Debate. — Was the noble self-sacrifice of the hero within the 
range of human generosity ? 

Essay. — The character of Carton as it develops under the influ- 
ence of his piu-e, imselfish love. 

FOURTH NOVEL 

Westward-Ho ! by Charles Kingsley. 
Point to be noted (suggested by Prof. B. G. ^[oulton). 

Character contrasts in the same family (a study of the two 
brothers Leigh and their cousin Eustace). 
Debate. — The morality of the English expeditions against the 
West. 

FIFTH NOVEL 

Ninety -Three, by Victor Hugo. 
Points to be noted (suggested by A. J. Grant, Esq., M.A.). 

1. That the book is without any important female character. 

How is the interest sustained without it ? 

2. Does the story strike you as characteristically French, and 

in what respects ? 

3. The character of the Marquis de Latenae as representing 

the best side of the ancient regime. 
Debate. — Was Cimourdain right in condemning Gauvain to 

death ? 
Essay. — Victor Hugo's view of the Kevolution. 

SIXTH NOVEL 

Vanity Fair, by "Wm. M. Thackeray. 
Points to be noted (suggested by Prof. O. Seaman). 

1. Worldliness absorbs the art and charm of the novel. Becky 
at the woi-st nearly always fascinates. Virtue is made 



WORK DONE BY THE C. N. R. U. 31 

either dull or absurd. Amelia is a poor hysterical thing, 
and worships a snob. Lady Jane is a good-natured non- 
entity, and loves a prig. Dobbin, the real hero, has large 
feet, and is generally awkward. Religion is made synony- 
mous with cant. 

2. Note two kinds of vulgarity in the attitude of the middle 

classes toward the aristocracy, — (a) a fawning admira- 
tion, as shown by many of the characters; {h) an affec- 
tation of contempt, as shown constantly by the author 
himself. 

3. The delightful balance of interest is due to Thackeray's 

power of reticence as well as of expression. Waterloo, for 
instance, is not made an excuse for fine writing or pro- 
tracted description. The single line that tells of George 
Osborne's death is a stroke of art. 

Character Sketch. — Captain Dobbin. 

Debate. ■ — Was Eawdon Crawley justified in condemning his 
wife ? 

Essay. — Tlie redeeming qualities in Becky Sharp. 



SEVENTH NOVEL 

Put Yourself in His Place, by Charles Beade. 

Points to he noted {suggested by Miss Spence). 

1. Three main pm-poses of the author: (a) to show that in 

the struggle of capital and labor due consideration has 
not been given to the value of life; (6) the power of sym- 
pathy as an interpreter of the actions of others; (c) the 
cowardly and inhuman methods trade unions have re- 
sorted to. 

2. That the interest of character is quite subordinate to that 

of incident. The dramatic and pictiu-esque character of 
some of the situations: viz., the turning of the portrait 
in the hall at Eaby; scene in the old church during a 
snow-storm. 

Debate. — Was Simmons right to keep silence on his death-bed? 

Essay. — The legitimate scope of trade unions. 



32 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

EIGHTH NOVEL 

Silas Marner, by George Eliot. 
Points to be noted (suggested by G. L. Dickinson, Esq., 3f.A.). 

1. Note the gradual disappearance of village life such as that 

described in the book before improved communications, 
large factories, etc. 

2. The change in Silas Marner's character under the influence 

of the child he has adopted. This is the central motive 
of the book. 

3. The nemesis falling on Godfrey in his childlessness by his 

wife, Mhile all the time his illegitimate child is growing 
up near him, but unknoAvn to him. 

Debate. — Is the effect of large industry an advantage or a disad- 
vantage to human and social relations ? 

Essay. — Nemesis. 



NIXTH XOVEL 

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bront6. 

Points to be noted (suggested by Dr. A. S. Percival). 

1. The book is neither artistic nor realistic, yet it possesses an 

engrossing interest. On what does the interest depend ? 

2. The characters: — 

Jane Eyre, a woman of little human sympathy, upright 
by ride rather than from any impulsive love of right. 
Note the vulgarity of her distrust of Rochester 
during lier engagement. 

Rochester, a woman's false tyi^e of manliness. He 
has a certain nobility, though his roughness and 
coarseness detract from the strength of his character. 

St. John Rivers, a selfish prig ; his uprightness based 
purely on hope of future reward. 

Debate. — Can Rochester's conduct to Jane Eyre be justified ? 

Essay. — The character of the author as revealed in the book. 



WORK DONE BY THE C. iV. K. U. 33 

TENTH NOVEL 

Wives and Daughters, by Mrs. Gaskell. 
Points to be noted (suggested by Miss Peard). 

1. Xote especially with what subtlety the laws of heredity are 

shown to work iu the characters of Mrs. Gibson and Molly, 
Mrs. Gibson and Cynthia, the Squire and Mrs. Hamley, 
and their two sons; the modification or accentuation of 
certain traits in the children. 

2. The charm of truthfulness and absence of exaggeration in 

the book. 

Debate. — Was cowardice the moral failing which worked most 
mischief in the course of the story ? 

Essay. — The law of heredity as shown in various characters in 
the book. 



ELEVENTH NOVEL 

Romola, by George Eliot. 

Points to be noted (suggested by W. E. Norris, Esq.). 

It is to the study of Tito Melema in chief that Romola — 
excellent as the work is throughout — owes its immor- 
tality. Note especially how his selfishness and cowardice 
have to be indicated so early in the book, that the read- 
er's sympathies are necessarily alienated from him, and 
it is therefore all the greater triumph on the writer's part 
to have conveyed the impression that in real life his charm 
would have been almost Irresistible. To have discovered 
something about the methods by which this character has 
been made to stand upon his feet is, no doubt, to have 
discovered something about the technical side of light lit- 
erature. 

Essays. 

1. The character of Savonarola, and the secret of his influence. 

2. Tito and Eomola : a contrast. 

3. Tito: as a political study, and a work of art. 



34 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

TWELFTH XOrEL 

Persuasion, by Jane Austen. 
Points to be noted (suggested by J. H. Shorthouse, Esq.). 

1. The extraordinary vitality of Miss Austen's characters, the 

more surprising as they are all, or nearly all, common- 
place and ordinary people. 

2. The character of Anne Elliot (considered by some to be the 

most perfect piece of work in English fiction). 
Debate. — Was Anne Elliot self-conscious ? and, if so, is self-con- 
sciousness a fault ? and why ? 

THIETEENTH XO VEL 

Alton Locke, by Charles Kmgsley. 
Points to be noted {suggested by Arthur Berry, Esq., M.A.). 

1. This is essentially a novel with a purpose; namely, to raise 

public opinion against the evils of sweating, to denounce 
cheapness and competition, and to advocate the union of 
the gentry and clergy with the working-classes against 
the commercial classes. 

2. Note the evil influence of Lillian on Alton. 

3. The character of Sandy Mackaye. 

Essay. — Wliether it is good art to teach political or other doc- 
trines in a novel. 
Debate. — Is the conversion of Alton uatural '? 
Essay. — Literary symbolism (Sandy Mackaye — Thomas Carlyle). 



FOURTEEXTII NOVEL 

Kenil'worth, by Sir Walter Scott. 

Points to be noted {suggested by Mr. Thomas Dawson). 

1. Xote how the general interest of the book is wonderfully 
divided between the narrative and the graphic pictures of 
English life in the Elizabethan period. Compare and 
contrast these pictures with those drawn in Westward 
Ho! 



WORK DONE BY THE C. N. R. U. 35 

2. Note the character of Queen Elizabeth, especially when she 

frequently betrays the weakness of her sex. 

3. It is not until the honor of Amy Robsart is imperilled that 

the real strength and nobility of her character is discov- 
ered. 

4. Observe the mesmeric power jiossessed by Varney, espe- 

cially in the scene when Amy drinks the liquid offered by 

him. 
Debate. — Which is the greater villain — Varney or Foster ? 
Essay. — The literaiy use of mesmeric fascination. 



FIFTEENTH NO VEL 

The Wandering Jevr, by Eugene Sue. 
Points to he noted (suggested by Prof. R. G. Moulton). 

1. Note how the legendary immortality of an individual is 

brought into contact with immortality as seen (1) in a 
family, (2) in property — compound interest, (3) in a cor- 
poration — the Jesuits. 

2. Contrast the first part of the book — intrigue by violent 

opposition — with the second part, — the intrigue that 
acts through the passions of its opponents. 
Essays. 

1. The difficulties and improbabilities of the story. 

2. The legend of the Wandering Jew in literature. 



SIXTEENTH NOVEL 

The Cloister and the Hearth, by Charles Reade. 

Points to be noted {suggested by G. L. Dickinson, Esq., M.A.). 

1. The value of the historical novel as supplementing history, 

giving with vividness the manners and customs and daily 
life of the period. 

2. The pai'ticular characteristics of the period with which the 

novel deals, — the transition from the Middle Ages to the 
Renaissance. 

3. The main interest of the story proper is the way in which 

the love of Gerard and Margaret is transformed without 



36 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

being lessened when they are unable to live as husband 
and wife. 
4. The broad humanity of the author, as, for example, in his 
sympathetic treatment of the soldier Denys, and of the 
beggar with whom Gerard travels. 
Essay. — The ideal of asceticism. 



SEVEyTEENTH NOVEL 

Esmond, by "Wm. M. Thackeray. 
Points to be noted (suggested by 2[iss Peard). 

1. Note the absence of any great central situation in Es- 

mond. Thei-e is scarcely one striking incident which 
takes hold of the reader, whereas the characters remain 
strong and distinct in the memory. 

2. Xote the excellence of the style. The story is told with 

extreme vigor and directness, and there is nothing which 
can be called ornamental description. Yet no historical 
novel carries one so completely into the spirit of the age. 

Debute. — Is Thackeray a cynic, or a groat moral satirist ? 

Essay. — The characters of Thackeray. 



EIGHTEENTH NOVEL 

The Egoist, by George Meredith. 
Points to be noted (suggested by E. Saltmarshe, Esq.). 

1. Note the descriptions of nature. 

2. The intensely pathetic figure of the hero. 

3. The restrained humor in " the aged and great wine scene." 
Debate. — Eliminating the chance which broke oflf the engage- 
ment, had Clara Middleton force of character enough to win 
her freedom again, having made the resolution to do so, or 
would Sir Willoughhy, with the powerful conventional weapon 
she had given him, viz.. her plighted troth, backed by his end- 
less resource of sophistry, and the subterfuges to which his 
egoism was capable of sending him, have won the day ? 

Essay. — The methods and teaching of George Meredith. 



WORK DONE BY THE C. N. R. U. 37 

NINETEENTH NOVEL 

David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens. 
Points to be noted (suggested by Sir Courtenay Boyle, K.C.B.'). 

1. How far was Mr. Micawber's improvidence personal to him- 

self ? and how far due to his surroundings ? What is the 
possibility that in real life a cliange of scene would have 
led to the change of character hinted at in the novel ? 

2. What is there to admire in (a) Steerforth, (6) Peggotty, 

(c) Traddles? 
Debate. — Does Dickens abuse literary art ? 
Essay. — David Copperfield as a prig. 



TWENTIETH NOVEL 

Elsie Vernier, by O. W. Holmes. 
Points to be noted (suggested by T. L. Brunton, Esq.,M.D., F.B.S.). 

1, Note the effect of inherited tendencies on the actions of 

individuals. 

2. The effect of accidental circumstances (e.g., disease affect- 

ing a parent) on the character of the offspring. 

Debate. — How far was Bernard Langdon justified in punishing 
Abner Briggs and his dog, considering that they were both 
acting according to their natures, which they had partly in- 
herited from their ancestors, and which were partly developed 
by the circumstances in which they were brought up ? 

Essay. — How far is the character of Elsie Venner to be regarded 
as a description of fact ? and how far as a parable ? 



TWENTY-FIRST NO VEL 

■Woodstock, by Sir Walter Scott. 

Points to be noted (suggested by Stanley Wayman, Esq.). 

1. The strange types of character produced by the troubles 
of the civil war: (1) Harrison, the religious fanatic. (2) 
Bletson, the philosophic atheist. (3) Desborough, the 
ignorant, ox-like man, wandering in the dark. 



38 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

2. Three types of the king's party: (1) The old-fashioned 
punctilious royalist, Sir Henry Lee. (2) The gallant, 
high-bred cavalier, Albert Lee. (3) The reckless, disso- 
lute cavalier, Wildrake. 
Debate. — Is the character of Trusty Tompkins, the forcible 
pi'eacher and the low spy and schemer, consistent or possible ? 
Essay. — The character of Cromwell as portrayed in Woodstock. 
Is it, so far as is now known, correct ? 



TWENTY-SECOND NOVEL 

The Shadow of the S'word, by R. Buchanan. 

Points to be noted {suggested by W. F. Moulton, Esq., M.A.). 

Note especially the personality of Napoleon. " He is not a 
great man: he has no heart." Discuss this statement of Mr. 
Arfoll's. 

Debate. — Does Kobert Buchanan clear Gwenfern entirely of the 
imputation of cowardice ? 

Essay. — The ethics of war. 



T WENT } - THIRD NO VEL 

Lorna Doone, by R. D. Blackmore. 
Points to be noted (suggested by E. J. Matliew, Esq., B.A.). 

1. The plot. Simple in itself, and somewhat complicated in 

the manner of telling. This is done purposely, to throw 
some light on the character of John Ilidd himself. 

2. The local coloring of the book is excellent. It conveys a 

Monderfully accurate idea of Devonshii-e and Somerset. 
Many tales dealing with special localities are capital for 
those who already know those localities. Lorna Doone 
goes farther than this. Note also the racial hatreds be- 
tween Celt and Saxon, especially when a Cornish person 
is introduced. 

3. Note how carefully and consistently the characters are 

drawn; how each keeps its individuality throughout the 
book. Note especially the clever studies of woman. Mrs. 



WORK DOXE BY THE C. N. R. U. 39 

Ridd, the two sisters, Ruth Huckaback and Betty Mux- 
worthy, being all really more complicated than Lorna 
herself. 

4. Note the style of the book. The prose often has a wonder- 
ful rhythm and ordered movement about it, so that it 
sometimes comes to be almost blank verse. Also note 
the author's keen eye for color and effect in describing 
sceneiy. 

Debate. — The nature of the book. Is it, or is it not, romantic ? 

Essay. — The character of John Ridd, 

T WENT T-FO UR TH NO VEL 

Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens. 
Points to be noted {suygested by the Earl of Suffolk). 

1. Note how greed will swamp and extinguish gratitude, as 

shown by Silas Wegg and Mr. Boffin, and the reverse as 
shown by the Boffins in their conduct to their late em- 
ployer's son. 

2. Note Dickens's view of the Poor Law, as illustrated in the 

life of Betty Higden. 

Essay. — Dickens and Thackeray : a contrast. 

Debate. — Was Harmon justified in concealing his identity after 
he knew of his supposed murder ? 

Difficulty Raised. — Is it possible for a man to be at the same 
time so shrewd and so unsuspicious as Mr. Boffin (always re- 
membering his position in life) is represented to be ? 

TWENTY-FIFTn NOVEL 

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas. 
Points to be noted (suggested by Prof. R. G. Moulton). 

1. Tlie Count of Monte Cristo is a masterpiece of the 
French school, especially suitable for the study of fiction 
from its many-sidedness. It is a terrible tragedy, an 
elaborate study of human nature and society ; and in par- 
ticular, it is a consummate piece of literary workmanship 
from beginning to end. 



40 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

2. Note some of the details by which Dumas builds up a seuse 

of mysterious and irresistible power as attaching to his 
hero. 

3. Note the following personages considered as race-types: 

Fernand, Danglars, Mercedes, Haydee, Caderousse, Ber- 
tuccio, Faria, Vampa. 

4. Note the retribution upon Villefort, Danglars, Fernand, 

and Caderousse. 
Essays. 

1. Trace in complete outline one of the main schemes of retri- 

bution in the story. 

2. Show how Monte Cristo's sense of his mission as an 

Earthly Providence begins to give way. 



ESSAYS 



WHY IS CHARLES DICKENS A MORE 

FAMOUS NOVELIST THAN 

CHARLES READE? 



^'^=*-S:>_ 






WHY IS CHARLES DICKENS A MORE 

FAMOUS NOVELIST THAN 

CHARLES READE? 



The fact of Dickens's popularity is established beyond 
all question. Any one who doubts this has only to make 
investigation at any reference library to find, that, be- 
sides the various editions of Dickens's novels which meet 
the demands and resources of every class of people, 
there is a constantly increasing literature which has 
taken root and flourishes on every item of Dickens's 
life, habits, haunts, works, and philosophy. 

Ask, on the other hand, for information about Reade, 
and you will meet with doubtful answers. A few in- 
complete notices of his life in biographical dictionaries 
will be shown you, the fact that he is dead will be in- 
sisted on, and you will be told that a sixpenny edition 
of his books is being published. 

Yet Walter Besant, no mean novelist, places Reade 
at the head of his profession, and Algernon Charles 
Swinburne indorses and strengthens Besant's verdict. 
What that verdict is the subjoined quotations will 
show, 

43 



44 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

" If all English-speaking readers were to vote for the 
best of living novelists, there can be little doubt that they 
would name Charles Keade. I am one of those who would 
so vote. I entirely agree with the popular verdict. I, for 
one, consider that Eeade takes rank with Fielding. Smollet, 
Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray ; that is to say, in the great 
and delightful art of fiction, wherein the English — who 
are always, in every age, doing something better than their 
neighbors — have surpassed the world, Charles Eeade 
stands among the foremost and best. . . . Let those who 
appreciate the best, the most faithful, the highest work in 
the Eoyal Art of Fiction, salute the Master." — Walter 
Besant in T^te Gentleman. 

" He has left not a few pages which, if they do not live 
as long as the English language, will fail to do so through 
no fault of their own, but solely through the malice of ac- 
cident, by which so many reputations worthy of a longer 
life have been casiially submerged or eclipsed. . . . That 
he was at his very best, and that not very rarely, a truly 
great writer of a truly noble genius, I do not understand 
how any competent judge of letters covAd possibly hesitate 
to affirm." — Algekxox Charles Swixbuexe. 

These are valuable testimonials to the fame of any 
writer ; but we have undertaken to prove that Reade's 
novels will never become classics, and to tind out why 
in this respect they differ from those of Dickens. 
Classics may be roughly defined as being- works which 
will live. The Iliad is a classic, so is the Bible, so is 
La JDivina Com/nedia, so are j:Esop's Fahles. All these 
divei"se books agree in three great essentials : they are 
written from the heart of man (not (T man^ to the 



IS DICKENS MORE FAMOUS THAN READS f 45 

heart of man ; they are not in any prevailing fashion, 
which might become out of date, but in the chameleon 
garb of an ever-changing universe ; and they were not 
written to make a book, or for any other reason than 
that the writers were thrilled by a touch on the cord 
that binds us to the highest and lowest in creation, and 
being so thrilled, had to pass on the mighty influence, 
whether it suited their momentary convenience or not. 
The live coal from off the altar of inspiration which has 
touched the lips of all our great classical writers has 
been as different as the lips it has touched. But it has 
always been burning with scorn of some fundamental 
sin of our race, not sputtering fitfully with party 
spites and parish cabals. 

The knowledge of a worthy aim, and the conscious- 
ness of being a mouthpiece of what the Germans call 
the " Zeitgeist,*' gives a leisureliness, a grand even-paced 
march to the style of great writers, which is as different 
as possible from the forceless fretting of the small an- 
tagonist of local abuses. Let us fix firmly in our minds 
that, thougli vogue seems greater than fame at times, it 
is no more so in reality than a fu'ework is brighter than 
the stars, or a fasliionable song more enduring than a 
melody of Beethoven's. 

Now, the above remarks apply, of course, only indi- 
rectly to novels, which are, as it were, merely the blos- 
soms of literature. But, seeing that only one reader 
out of twenty makes any pretence of reading anything 



46 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

but fiction, it is necessary for connoisseurs of novel-read- 
ing to be able to distinguish a good novel from a bad 
one. Reduced to its elements, the judgment of a novel 
must go on the same lines as that of any other literary 
work ; but, lest the definition we have supplied should 
seem inappropriate to such books as those we are con- 
sidering, we will go into detail, and deal more with 
concrete examples. 

All good things are in trinities ; therefore again we 
demand three qualities in the novel we like to read. 
We demand firstly, that it sliall not bore us : secondl}-, 
that it sliall not bear the stamp of untruth on its face : 
and thirdly, that it shall leave us better men and women 
than it found us. 

Now, applj'ing our first standard of excellence to 
Reade's three best-known novels, we are compelled to 
confess that his company wearies us extremely. His 
characters are not alive, they never were, and we are too 
thankful to know that they never will be. In creating 
them he seems to have said to himself, '• I want an 
innocent, pure-minded girl in this chapter," — or* " I 
want a villain," — or " a comic doctor," as the case may 
be, and forthwith he turns his eye inward to see what 
his own idea of such an article is : then, without com- 
paring his conception of it with the specimens around 
him. he drags out his material, and sticks it together, 
labels it "high-souled maiden," "honest, eccentric doc- 
tor," "'fastidious matron," or ••noble-minded man of 



IS DICKENS MORE FAMOUS THAN READE ? 47 

God," and hangs the incidents of his certainly clever 
plots upon the pegs so mechanically provided. 

He is not content with this cataloguing of his people: 
he allows them each only one spring of action, and one 
method of expressing themselves. And yet with all 
this we have no mental picture of his personages be- 
fore our eyes. His character sketches are not graphic, 
though his narrative is. If he had used haK the knowl- 
edge and energy in telling about his humans that he 
has done in describing his storms, dangers, and acci- 
dents, he might have taken a much higher place than 
he has done amongst his brother writers. 

After all, it is human nature most of us care to read 
about, human nature as acted on by this and that 
event ; not events disconnected from their human sur- 
roundings, and forced into undue prominence by tliree 
black pencil marks, and a host of exclamation notes 
and changes of type, to attract our attention to them. 

We might draw up a list of Reade's characters with- 
out difficulty, and it would stand thus : — 

Prigs : Alfred Hardie, George Fielding, "William 
Fielding, Frank Eden, the clergyman in Foul Play 
(whose name has escaped us), Mr. Saunders, etc. 

Bashful maidens inclined to piety : Julia Dodd. Jane 
Hardie, Susan JNlerton, Christie Johnstone, and the 
heroine of Foul Plai/, etc. 

Comic doctors (N.B. All Reade's medical men are 
comic, and most of them empirics) : Drs. Sampson, 



48 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

Wycherly, Aberford, the leech in The Cloister and the 
Hearth, etc. 

Villains (in whom it is impossible to be interested) : 
Mr. Hardie, Noah Skinner, Mr. Meadowes, Peter Craw- 
ley, Hawes, Ghysbrecht, etc., and so ad infiyiitum. 

We may be certain that whenever a member of our 
first list comes on the scene, particularly if he is set to 
anything in the nature of love-making, he will deliver 
himself in rounded periods — preferably in Latin. The 
trail of the serpent of prudery and pedantry is over 
them all. 

Take an example : — 

Alfred Hardie has been separated from his Julia for 
a long and agonizing period. It is night ; stars twinkle, 
zephyrs whisper; the bereaved heroine, gazing from her 
lattice, hears a sigh. Enter the enamoured Alfred with 
the following amazing speech : — 

" Cicero says, ^quitas ipsa lucet per se. And yet I 
hesitate and doubt in a matter of right and wrong like an 
academic philosopher, weighing and balancing mere aca- 
demic straws." 

Perhaps it is unconsciously done, but certainly Reade 
is a genius in the particular of placing his good young 
men in the undignified position of being wooed by 
women whom they do not love. It requires a St. 
Antony to retain his equilibrium and avoid looking 
ridiculous under such circumstances. This fact Reade 



IS DICKENS MORE FAMOUS THAN READE 1 49 

evidently overlooks, for in every case (those of Alfred 
and Mrs. Archbold, and Gerard and the Princess 
Clalia, for instance) he enlarges on the subject with 
repulsive circumstantiality and detail. In fact, through- 
out the three books we are more particularl}^ consid- 
ering, — Hard Cash, It is Never Too Late to Mend, and 
Foul Play, — our author shows an overwhelming de- 
sire to revel in unpleasing particulars. It would have 
been an immense help to him, as a genre writer, if any- 
body could have brought home to him the truth, that 
in books, as in civilized life, the operations of the scul- 
lery and dressing-room are not considered suitable for 
exhibition in cultured society. 

It is strange that he should have suffered from this 
tendency, for he lived and wrote before the days wlien 
nastiness and phj^siological monstrosities were consid- 
ered to give realism to fiction. 

It is not so much coarseness in him, as a certain con- 
stant tendency to vulgarity in small details ; the male 
side of the quality whose female counterpart produces 
Keynotes, The Heavenly Twins, Salome, and Trilby. 

Now, to take the other side of the question, Dickens's 
characters, although many of them seem to be copies of 
one another, are specialized, li\dng, breathing entities ; 
complex souls in recognizable, individual bodies. His 
young men are alive with all the virtues and vices, 
hopes and little ambitions, tricks of costume and man- 
ner, eccentricities and follies, of all the young men any 



60 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING, 

of us know. They act in the vacillating, provisional 
way in which young men have a habit of acting ; and 
they make their history, instead of merely illustrating 
a ready-made one. Whether we like or dislike them, 
we have an interest in them, and are sorry when no 
more is to be heard of them. 

Compare Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Pip, 
Herbert Pocket, Martin Chuzzlewit, or Arthur Clen- 
nam, with any of Reade's monstrosities, and the rea- 
son of the latter's failure to enlist our sympathies will 
be at once apparent. 

Dickens's world is evidently studied from this one 
in which we suffer and enjoy, only its general trend is 
visibly upward. His atmosphere is a little purer than 
this of ours, but we feel we are at home ; his very 
streets and rooms are well known to us, and the faces 
of his motley company are those of familiar friends. 
He plays gently and harmoniously on those cords 
which are common to the fastidious aesthete and the 
half-civilized squatter. Can any one forget the quiet 
beauty of Bret Harte's " Dickens in Camp " ? The evi- 
dent truth of this slight poem is a triumphant answer 
to the accusation sometimes heard that Dickens is too 
local and too limited in range to attain immortality. 
Association with his characters is like living with a 
chatty, good-humored, high-principled companion, in 
whose society we grow unconsciously better and wiser, 
whilst forgetting our sins and sorrows, our unpaid 



IS D TOKENS MORE FAMOUS THAN READS f 51 

bills, and our depression when a pessimistic mood 
assails us. 

We have said that the second requisite of a really 
good novel should be truth. It seems a paradox, and 
yet it is not so. 

We know perfectly well that theatre scenes are 
painted canvas, and that the hero's wounds and the 
heroine's tears are merely shams ; but as soon as some 
hitch in the machinery or ill-directed light forces the 
fact upon our notice, we lose interest. Our minds 
never were deceived ; but we allowed our senses to be 
hoodwinked, and have a right to be indignant when 
our complacency is abused. Reade lets the unreality 
of his scenes and stories peep through continually ; 
now it is the unearthly virtues of his good people, 
now the unrelieved badness of his sinners, now one 
inaccurate technicality, and now another. His design 
in most of liis novels is to expose and correct some 
crying social abuse, and he does his fighting with a 
great Teutonic sledge-hammer. 

The thuds of a sledge-hammer are not true fiction. 
We become irritated by the chorus of "Bump! Bump I 
Bump!" all through the story. We feel like men 
lost in a maze, in which every path leads up to the 
same unpleasant bugbear. And if ever we do lose 
ourselves for a moment in the narrative, out steps the 
author to nudge us, or supply copious explanations 
anent the galvanic gambollings of his marionettes. 



52 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

It is not in human nature to bear these nudgings 
patiently. Why are we supposed to require the ser- 
vices of the "Flapper" described in Gulliver's Travels? 
Other authors can trust us to digest their good things 
without having them peptonized for us ; and if they 
suspect their work is above our capacity, they know 
better than to destroy the verisimilitude of their stories 
by coming out before the footlights to puff their per- 
formances. This unfortunate predilection becomes 
more marked wlien Reade undertakes to be funny. 

The account of Mi's. Dodd's suitors in chapter thirty- 
nine of Hard Cash., and the overloaded description of 
how Mr. Hardie cooked his accounts in chapter six- 
teen, are good examples of this. 

In passing we may remark that Reade's humor is 
not of a high order, being for the most part of a very 
commonplace burlesque type. 

He has comic passages, it is true, such as the death- 
bed scene of Jane Hardie; but these flashes of fun 
are not produced intention all}^, and owe their piquancy 
principally to their delightful incongruity. 

Judging from this author's singular choice of ejji- 
thets, one would say that — to adapt Lowell's criticism 
of Shakespeare — " The hot conception of the author 
had no time to cool while he was debating the com- 
parative respectability of this word or that; but he 
snatched what word his instinct prompted ; " and in 
Reade's case his instincts, not being perfectly true, 
have prompted him wrongly. 



IS DICKENS MORE FAMOUS THAN READE ? 53 

Gentlemen and ladies " purr " to each other in his 
pages ; the heroine " gurgles " her love ; an " iron 
young woman" is engaged to nurse an invalid; the 
second walking-gentlemen's " lion eyes " are contin- 
ually staring the " dove-like " ones of the second 
heroine " out of countenance and into love ; " and so 
on and so on, through a whole host of twisted meta- 
phors, grammatical errors, and errors in taste. 

He has missed the intimate connection there is be- 
tween the word and the thing, and has written pages 
of slipshod English, of which a schoolboy might well 
be ashamed. 

Now Dickens, although verbose and garrulous as be- 
fits a writer of his peculiar calibre, is always picturesque 
and felicitous. He is quite as heated in the warfare of 
right against wrong as Reade ; but he knows that the 
novel which is only a series of furious diatribes fails of 
its legitimate aim, and also misses its ostensible one by 
over-strenuousness. 

He knows also that the keen shaft of satire will open 
joints in armor which will not yield to hammering, 
and he makes good use of his knowledge. He never 
calls your attention to the unreality of his puppet-show, 
not he ; he believes in it all himself, and is sure his read- 
ers will believe too. His account of things compared 
to Reade's is as Carlyle's History of the French Revolu- 
tion compared to that of Thiers. 

Reade's club, bristling with facts and statistics, is 
powerless when pitted against Dickens's stiletto. 



54 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

As regards the third demand we make of a novel, 
we will not go so far as to say that Reade does not 
write in an improving manner. 

He does elevate the banners of purity, truth, and love 
— and then blinds us by flapping them in our faces. 
He advocates district-visiting ; but in two of his books 
he tells us what a thankless office it is, and how little 
sympathy the objects of our charity have for any woes 
but their own. (This, by-the-by, proves how little he 
knows about it. The poor are not unsympathetic, and 
not more ungrateful than the rich.) Perhaps the fact 
that the fair district-visitors used their charities un- 
blushingly as a patent balm for heartbreak may explain 
the unsatisfactory results of their philanthropy. 

He makes goodness generally, save in the case of 
Gerard and Christie Johnstone, a spiritless, colorless 
thing. We feel, with Mark Twain, that moral excel- 
lence is petrifaction, and religious sensibility a disease ; 
and " we don't want to be like any of his good people, 
we prefer a little healthy wickedness." 

Dickens, on the other hand, without arousing our 
combativeness by preaching, shows us the folly and ri- 
diculousness of being wicked, and leaves color and mo- 
tion in his good people, so that we can follow in their 
steps without fear of unwholesome consequences. A 
comparison of Agnes Wickfield with Jane Hardie or 
Margaret Brandt will best illustrate our meaning. 

It only remains for us to say that, in the matter of 



IS DICKENS MORE FAMOUS THAN READE f 55 

plot and descriptions of stirring incidents by flood and 
field, Reade as far transcends Dickens as the latter does 
Reade in other essentials. The works of both authors 
have acquired through lapse of years that aloofness 
which allows their relative values to be correctly esti- 
mated. 

They have gained what in pictures is termed atmos- 
phere. New men, new books, new schemes, are often 
beautified by a strange charm which disappears with 
their novelty, and which yet, whilst it prevails, forbids 
all real criticism of their work. The books of Reade 
and Dickens have outlived their youthful charm. The 
special abuses against which they appealed are for the 
most part abolished. 

It remains to be seen how long the man of plot and 
action Avill hold his ground against the man of domestic 
detail and microscopic analysis. The one is essentially 
the mouthpiece of his place and time, the other the 
voice of all time and all places. 

One of Reade 's books. The Cloister and the Hearth, 
has the vital spark in it and will live ; the others will 
not. As for Dickens's works, it may be said of them, 
as was said of a much greater book, that if his novels 
were all burnt to-morrow, they could be collected and 
reconstructed from the hearts of readers, in courts and 
cottages at home and abroad. 

ELLEJ^ CUMPSTON. 



ESSAYS 



CLARA MIDDLETON 






^ ^S^:s\^ 






CLARA MIDDLETON 



Meredith is the Browning of the novel, and whatever 
may be the popular estimate of his work, to the student 
it is unique in that it requires something of the concen- 
trative energy that we give to science, if not also a 
special mental fitness, before it can be thoroughly en- 
joyed. Hence, those for whom the novel is merely a 
pastime for an idle hour must leave him to find their 
recreation in more commonplace fiction. And this pref- 
erence will not be an indication of the incompre- 
hensibility of iNleredith solely, but an evidence of the 
wrong impression which exists as to the function of 
classical fiction, and, in regard to Meredith, the quality 
and nature of his work. TJie U(joist, for example, is 
comedy — with the Greek flavor ; and this qualifying 
phrase is distinctive, without depreciating either the 
humor or satire of other novelists. 

Hence, in Ilie Egoist we may find fresh stimulus for 
our literary studies, and Clara Middleton may fitly be 
selected from the mass to show in some points the 
special method of Meredith in characterization. 

It may, indeed, be held that some responsibility is 

59 



60 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

incurred in making our choice, and that the delicate 
tints of light and shade in this character, so pleasing 
to the individual sense in the seclusion of the study, 
will be destroyed by the inrush of the garish light of 
publicity. The difficulty of attempting to reconstruct 
the character by means of criticism (always a clumsy 
method, but unfortunately the best we know) is fully 
appreciated ; and the attempt to materialize her by pro- 
jecting her into the world, as seen through the medium 
of any sense save that of the author's, may seem the 
grossest sacrilege. Yet the character is so fine a study 
in the feminine, and iaffords so many splendid oppor- 
tunities for contrast and comparison with the feminine 
creations of other authors, and at the same time gives 
the further opportunity of saying something about the 
influences which have gone to mould the character- 
ization of women in English fiction in the past, that 
scruples may be laid to one side for the nonce, and — 
though at the risk of the charge of egotism — we may 
proceed to analyze the character. 

I say " in the past," because Clara Middleton is a 
point of departure from the conventional characteriza- 
tion of women in English fiction. The moral forces 
which have dominated and restrained the artist's hand 
hitherto are here wholly set aside ; but a master-hand 
has effected the changes, and they are wrought so 
strongly and withal so delicately, that the character has 
passed the usual criticism without attracting the notice 



CLARA MIDDLETON. 61 

that it would have attracted had they been wrought 
by one less skilful at his craft. 

There are two points in the character to which we 
may give special attention, as their combination has 
hitherto been considered impracticable, if we look at 
them from the point of view of the traditional character 
with which the older novelists of the nineteenth century 
have invested women in English fiction. 

In the first place, Clara Middleton is essentially Eng- 
lish. This, it may be presumed, the majority of readers 
feel instinctively, and believe because of the affirma- 
tion of instinct, rather than because it may be shown 
by a critical estimate of the character. It is necessary, 
however, to make this estimate; for the other charac- 
teristic which Meredith has developed in Clara Middle- 
ton would not have been such a singular innovation 
had it not been combined with one that is peculiarly 
English. 

Let us, then, begin by saying that she has that sobri- 
ety of mind and temperament which is a truly national 
characteristic, and which is the product of our insu- 
larity and our social morality. Some insistence might 
be given to this point ; because we can no more mould 
or approximate to the English character upon any Con- 
tinental model than we can fly, and this even in de- 
spite of our modern cosmopolitan culture. Our national 
character has a peculiar flavor — if I may so phrase it 
— in this respect, and it is impossible to define it with 



62 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

any great exactitude ; but it is so truly the outgrowth 
of our institutions and trainingr that none but the wil- 
fully blind can mistake the phlegm or stoicism of some 
of our Continental neighbors for this English sobriety, 
which combines at once serene self-possession with en- 
terprise and effort for precedence. 

Then we have, in addition to this, that love of liberty 
and nature which is our common heritage, — the love of 
liberty common to all the English, and of nature accord- 
ing to the opportunities which are held out by the 
circumstances and conditions of our lives. For it may 
be said with perfect truth that the instinctive love of 
nature is as truly a characteristic of the English as the 
love of liberty; but it is suppressed in many instances 
by the more serious business of life. 

In the character of Clara Middleton, Meredith has 
blended each with admirable precision. The limitations 
of Sir Willoughby Patterne's domains are in her mind 
always associated with the narrow, prescribed area of 
his mind ; and she is painfully aware that the scope for 
her activities in the future when she has become his 
wife are too circumscribed for her nature. The great 
point insisted upon here by the novelist is the perfect 
poise which her love of nature and liberty gives to her 
deportment; and this adjustment to which her life con- 
forms, and b}^ which it is governed, is the ideal charac- 
teristic of the English. 

Then add to this her variety — her whims and fan- 



CLARA MIDDLETON. 63 

cies, if you choose, or, as her father calls them, " the 
prerogative of the feminine." Is there not here a re- 
flex of the climate, with its alternations of cloud and 
shine, of tempest and peace ? All this appears to me so 
essentially English, that I must apologize for treating 
of it here. I am afraid, after all, that the instinctive 
feeling that she is English will outweigh any calm 
analysis that pretended to separate the different ele- 
ments, and show that the ultimate result of the combi- 
nation is to make the Englishwoman. But, as I said 
before, it is to make the comparison between this 
characteristic and another that is essentially un-Eng- 
lish that I do it. 

Then, what is this un-English and antagonistic ele- 
ment in Clara Middleton which makes her so essen- 
tially unlike the traditional heroine of the English 
novel ? I would define it simply as sensuousness. She 
is not only beautiful, but sensuously beautiful ; and in 
order to emphasize the definition, let me call to my aid 
an illustration, symbolical and subtle, because natural, 
— the Greek myth of Venus — the goddess rising from 
the bath in all her sensuous beauty, and striking the 
luckless hunter blind. This, it appears to me, if we 
eliminate the anger of the goddess as a conventional 
interpolation of a later age, is the universal symbol of 
love which strikes with blindness all who are unfortu- 
nately affected. And it applies to Clara Middleton, — 
though on the surface there does not seem to be any 



64 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

singularity in this, for it may be said that all the nov- 
elists have unconsciously echoed the symbolism of the 
Greek. Its application to the character under discussion 
lies in this, that while she dazzles all beholders with 
her charms, she also exercises to the full that mys- 
terious sexual power which is and has ever been the 
prerogative of the woman. 

But here let me remark, lest I should misinterpret 
Meredith, and unduly shock those who uphold the tra- 
ditional method of the English novelists, that the sen- 
suousness of Clara Middleton, though analogous to that 
element which we meet with in everyday life, is not 
of the common quality. There is visible in Meredith's 
creation neither moral laxity nor the mental aberration 
which constitutes the danger of the characteristic. It 
is ideal, subordinated, and subservient to the highest 
art. There is nothing that the prurient may revel in or 
the moralists cavil at ; but it is impossible to help our- 
selves from gliding into the atmosphere of sensuous- 
ness wherein Meredith has enveloped his creation. Sir 
Willoughby Patterne feels the charm acutely, after she 
has wounded his egoism : — 

'' He placed an exceedingly handsome and flattering 
yoimg widow of his acquaintance . . . beside Clara for a 
comparison ; involuntarily, and at once ... in despite of 
Lady Mary's high birth and connections as well, the silver 
lustre of the maid sicklied the poor widow." 

And Vernon Whitford's experience is also telling : — 



CLARA MIDDLE TON. 66 

" Take your chin off your hand, your elbow off your 
book, and fix yourself," said Vernon, wrestling with the 
seduction of Crossjoy's idolatry; for Miss Middleton's ap- 
pearance had been preternaturally sweet on her departure, 
and the next pleasure to seeing her was hearing of her 
from the lips of this passionate young poet." 

The Doctor's babbling in " the aged and great wine " 
scene is also effective : — 

"I hoped once . . . but she is a girl. The nymph of 
the woods is in her. Still she will bring you her flower-cup 
of Hippocrene. She has that aristocracy — the noblest. 
She is fair. . . . She has no history. You are the first 
heading of the chapter. With you she will have one tale, 
as it should be. You know — most fragrant she that 
smells of nought — she goes to you from me, from me 
alone, from her father to her husband." 

And then follows the experience of Sir Willoughby as 
he had seen her : — 

" Distressingly sweet ; . . . sweet with sharpness of 
young sap. Her eyes, her lips, her fluttering dress that 
played happy mother across her bosom ; and her laughter, 
her slim figure, peerless carriage, all her terrible sweetness 
touched his wound to the smarting quick." 

And her sensuous influence even affects the boy 
Crossjoy. 

" Miss Middleton lay back on the grass, and said, ' Are 
you going to be fond of me, Crossjoy ? ' 

" The boy sat blinking. His desire was to prove that he 
was immoderately fond of her already, and he might have 



66 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

flown at her neck had she been sitting up, but her recum- 
bancy and eyelids half-closed excited wonder in him and 
awe. His young heart beat fast." 

These examples are sufficient for the purpose of show- 
ing Meredith's sensuous envelojDinent of the character. 
And it is simply a confirmation of our experience, 
that he, by combining these characteristics, has been 
truer in his delineations than those which have been 
before him in English fiction. For we all know, and it 
is tacitly acknowledged, that the sensuous charm of the 
feminine is at all times operative. But it is a fact that 
the older novelists have omitted or disguised with 
one consent ; as if it were possible, in analyzing the 
motives of marriage, or the physiology of love, to leave 
the sexual passion out of consideration. 

Take Thackeray as an example. His good women 
are nearly always insipid, — 

" Too good 
For hiunan nature's daily food." 

In Penden7iis, Laura Bell is the representative of the 
coming woman ; she is quite English, too, and hence, 
I think, may be fitly chosen for comparison with Clara 
Middleton. In what, then, does she differ from Mere- 
dith's heroine ? Simply in this, — that Thackeray has 
hidden from view the most womanly side of the fem- 
inine nature ; she is full of incomparable excellences, 
but, as woman, she is wofully incomplete as a study in 



CLARA MIDDLETON. 67 

human nature, and beside the creation of Meredith, she 
pales with ineffectual fires. Thackeray gives us the 
unfinished sketch ; Meredith has filled in the shading. 

And Thackeray is not alone in his incompleteness of 
the study of the feminine ; generally speaking, our nov- 
elists have not dared to deal with the hidden emotions 
of life, or, if they have, they have dealt with them 
impalpably, and glozed them over with a cloud of ver- 
biage, and left their meanings to the imagination. 

Dickens's studies in this respect are inconceivably 
ridiculous. He can paint the superficial emotions, and 
exaggerate pathos ; but he makes you weep for joy 
when he attempts to reconcile his art in the delineation 
of the female character with the conventional moral 
prejudice of the English people. Take an example 
from Domhey and Son: he makes Dombey's wife leave 
her husband and go off to the Continent witli Carker. 
At the conclusion of the journey, poor Carker gets, 
instead of loving caresses, the promise of a knife, and 
the reader gets a melodrama. It is an elopement badly 
conceived and worse executed. One is tempted to ask 
what good reasons had Dickens for covering this woman 
with shame, — for he arouses the worst of our social 
prejudices when he makes her elope with Carker, — and 
then refrain from giving us the inevitable result of the 
elopement. It is hardly possible to imagine anything 
more foreign to human nature than Dickens's concep- 
tion ; it is false to experience, and yet more false to art. 



68 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

And Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is hardly better 
in execution. There are any number of excellent 
reasons to justify Rochester's treatment of Jane Eyre, 
but no amount of reason would have justified him had 
the marriage ceremony been performed. The catas- 
trophe which takes place on the morning of the 
wedding just averts our prejudice, and saves the repu- 
tation of the novelist. Here, too, you will see, our 
moral censorship has to be appeased, and character and 
circumstances have to be moulded to suit our precon- 
ceived notions of these things. 

Even George Eliot must bow to the inevitable. The 
novelist may mould her life on a principle above the 
criticism of society, but these instincts must not ap- 
pear in her conception of feminine nature in her books. 
Maggie TuUiver, in the Mill 07i the Floss, must die an 
unnatural death, — is drowned to appease the savage 
instincts of our conventional morality. And every one 
must have been struck with the immense difference 
which exists between Shakespeare's conception of the 
passionate Italian nature in Romeo and Juliet, and 
George Eliot's conception of the same passionate 
Italian nature in Romola. Shakespeare, of course, was 
not influenced by these conventional restraints, and 
could afford to be true to humanity and art ; but George 
Eliot could not, and hence Romola is Italian only when 
seen through the English spectacles of George Eliot, 
and the passionate Italian nature is subdued by the 



CLARA MIDDLETON. 69 

cold and bloodless morality of the English people in 
the nineteenth century. 

Hence, then, Meredith appears to me to be the point 
of departure, as I said at the outset, for the better treat- 
ment of the feminine in the future. 

But I Avould not stop here ; if IMeredith has betrayed 
one of the fundamental canons of the English novelist's 
craft, he has also effected a reconciliation between it 
and art. 

In Clara Middleton we approach nearer to Shake- 
speare's conception of woman's nature and purpose, with 
its natural artistic setting in frame of gold. She is 
an artistic triumph, both in conception and achieve- 
ment ; " true to the kindred points of heaven and 
home." 

Becky Sharp, which I take to be one of the greatest 
achievements in English fiction — in the feminine — 
judged purely from the standpoint of art, is incomplete 
when compared with Meredith's heroine ; there are un- 
imagined details in her life which Thackeray omitted ; 
periods when Becky drops out of existence, and even 
the denizens of Vanity Fair could take no cognizance 
of her actions. Now, this is due to one of two reasons : 
either it is due to the instinctive sense of proportion in 
the artist, or it is due to the influence which the cur- 
rent morality exercised over him in this particular 
direction, with the rest of his brethren, making him 
subordinate his art to conventional moral prejudice. 



70 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

This last I take to be the true reason, and in chapter 
sixty-four in Vanity Fair he says so himself. 

Here, then, is the artist's ackncwledgment of his fail- 
ure to complete his ideal, owing to certain predominant 
notions of moralit}^ prevailing in his auditory. He 
must mix his colors in lives in accordance with the 
preferential tastes of society. He may, and he Arts, 
drawn in lines that are indeed most strongly sugges- 
tive. This is forgiven, so long as the naked reality is 
hidden ; but the picture is still incomplete, and all these 
gaps and evasions noticeable in Becky's career mar the 
perfection of his work, and rasp upon our nerves, mak- 
ing us wish that the rigidly moral tone of English 
social life had not been so strongly developed as to 
come perennially into collision with the artist's concep- 
tion, and make ideal achievement impossible. 

And Meredith, wliile giving in the characterization 
of Clara Middleton an artistic completeness, lias left 
nothing to cavil at in the sensuous charm which he has 
thrown around her. 

I am aware that there is a stage, as where wit degen- 
erates into buffoonery, so where artistic license in lim- 
ning the erotic emotions degenerates into licentiousness. 
But the days of Wycherley and Congreve, with their 
exaggerated emphasis on the vices of society, are over 
in English literature. Theirs was not art ; it was the 
portrayal of sensuality and vicious pleasure for its 
own sake. And the delineation of vice which arises 



CLARA MIDDLETON. 71 

from the morbid pleasure of steeping the poetic faculty 
in sensual desire is perhaps after all the worst prostitu- 
tion of the artist's power. 

Meredith avoids everything in our human instincts 
which w^ould tend to debase his ideal. He deals with 
the hidden emotions of life only to lift them out 
of the commonplace, and set them where, with true 
poetic insight, he sees they will appear, not to the 
untutored imagination, but to minds fitted to receive 
the subtle intuitions of a master. And he has withal 
the power to evoke the soft and radiant light which 
has ever been the strongest bond between master and 
disciple, and which is a truer guide to the master's 
thought than any skilled criticism which does not 
vibrate this sympathetic medium. 

Clara Middleton is comparable to an English spring 
morning, with its inexpressible charm, when the earth 
is blushing with life, and the sun is veiling his face like 
a coy maiden with the thin gray mist that rises over 
wood and field ; when the air is instinct, and the birds 
are singing their sweetest song of praise in honor of the 
new-born day. 

This is the time when nature appeals most directly 
to us, by unveiling the sensuous, glowing side of crea- 
tion, and the ordinary processes of life are glorified by 
the divine instinct which is flowing through our veins, 
and tingling into pleasant sensitiveness the dormant 
chords of our lives. Whoever has been penetrated 



72 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

with these emotions of nature in the spring days, when 

" Nature is tremulous with excess of joy," has felt the 

charm which rises from the contemplation of the rich 

and rare embodiment of feminine qualities in Clara 

Middleton. 

JOSEPH FAIRNEY. 



ESSAYS 



THE IDEAL OF ASCETICISM 






THE IDEAL OF ASCETICISM 



The Cloister and the Hearth is a book of considera- 
ble power and ability, whicli its author has come very 
near to spoiling, from the 8esthetic point of view, by 
a most unhappy sentence, and an irritating foot-note 
thereto attached. The sentence is on the last page but 
one, and is as follows : — 

'< I ask your sympathy, then, for their rare constancy 
and pure affection, and their cruel separation by a vile 
heresy in the bosom of the Church ; but not your pity for 
their early but happy end." 

The foot-note attached to "vile heresy" is "Celibacy 
of the clergy, an invention truly fiendish." The writer 
of this essay would beg leave to urge that this sentence 
and its foot-note are to be reprobated, whatever views 
we may hold on the particular subject mentioned, be- 
cause they unveil in a crude and inartistic manner a 
purpose which the story itself, told as it is with such- 
power and pathos, would leave sufficiently prominent, 
and because they deal in far too summary a fashion 
with a tangled and difficult subject. The ascetic idea 
is a many-sided one, taking varying forms under vary- 

75 



76 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING 

ing circumstances. And it should be observed at the 
outset that it is not by any means the invention of 
Catholic Christianity, although in our minds it is very 
largely associated with it. It is by an examination 
of the principles on which asceticism has based itself, 
and of the varying forms in which it has been ex- 
hibited, that we may hope to get some view of our 
subject, — "the ideal of asceticism," 

There was a great deal of asceticism of a monastic 
type deeply interwoven in the old religions of the 
East, such as Buddhism, and the religion of the Per- 
sian Zoroaster. Indeed, monasticism constitutes the 
central feature of the former. It seems to have ex- 
hibited itself in the shape of a desire to retire from 
tlie impediments of ordinary life, and to seek after a 
philosophic calm and contemplation, together with an 
emancipation as complete as possible from the enchain- 
ing passions and affections of the flesh. It was a stage 
to which every true Buddhist was expected to attain 
sooner or later in his religious life. Such an asceticism 
was inseparably connected with a principle common to 
all the prominent systems of philosophy and religion 
in the East — a belief in the inherent evil of things 
material, and so of the flesh and the natural affections. 
This type of asceticism was a marked feature in the 
philosophy of the Greek Pythagoras ; and it appears 
strongly, though in a modified form, in the writings 
of Plato and Aristotle. It is modified by the ^ery 



THE IDEAL OF ASCETICISM. 77 

great stress laid by these and. by most Greek thinkers 
on a man's duty as a citizen. 

Christianity, then, found already existing in the 
natures of its Oriental converts a very strong ten- 
dency towards monasticisni ; and the circumstances by 
which early Christianity was surrounded, and the un- 
swerving standard of high morality which Christianity 
upheld, alike contributed to foster it. For Christian 
monasticisni s^^rang into being as a revolt from the 
frightful wickedness which accompanied the decay of 
Pagan civilization. The hideous license existing in 
the Roman empire in the days of early Christianity 
has been painted in lurid colors by many writers, and 
the church did not hesitate to make a strong practical 
protest against it. To the Christian the imperative call 
seemed to be to come out from the midst of a world of 
hopeless depravity. It can hardly be considered a 
matter of wonder that early Christian asceticism soon 
ran into excessive and exaggerated forms. 

It was in Egypt that monasticisni took deepest root, 
and in the third and fourth centuries there were many 
thousands of monks living in the desert retreats of 
that country. Egyptian monasticisni took a most exag- 
gerated form. An absurd and disproportionate stress 
was laid upon certain portions of the gospel teaching. 
Passages such as, " He that loveth father or mother 
more than me is not worthy of me," were distorted 
beyond all recognition, until it became a virtue to 



78 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

desert even Christian parents in the most relentlessly 
cruel manner. Many stories are to be found in Lecky's 
History of European Morals illustrative of this. Mor- 
tification of the flesh was pursued to the most rigorous 
extreme, and the body was lacerated and starved in the 
fierce endeavor to eradicate every vestige of the natural 
appetites of mankind. Many of the Egyptian monks 
lived in solitude, wrestling in utter loneliness with the 
powers of evil which seemed to infect the whole world. 
The effect of such a life of austerity and solitude was 
often simply to foster the horrible visions and imagina- 
tions of evil from which the monk sought to rid himself. 
The true proportion of morality was thrown out, and 
the domestic virtues were rigorously suppressed. " To 
break by his ingratitude the heart of the mother who 
had borne him, to persuade the wife who adored him 
that it was her duty to separate from him forever, to 
abandon his children, uncared for and beggars, to the 
mercies of the world, was regarded by the true hermit 
as the most acceptable offering he could make to his 
God. His business was to save his own soul." 

The great St. Jerome, who did much to foster and 
encourage monasticism, endeavored to regulate these 
austerities and to restrain the more exaggerated forms 
of mortification ; and as time went on, this excess was 
gradually regulated. But it was with the growth of 
that type of monasticism which St. Benedict founded, 
that a better order of things came about. The earlier 



THE IDEAL OF ASCETICISM. 79 

raonasticism in its fanatical devotion could think of 
nothing but the suppression of all that was earthly ; 
and even learning of all kinds was rigorously avoided, 
and no useful work of any sort was undertaken. The 
Benedictine monasteries, on the other hand, were cen- 
tres of civilization and industry, doing much for the 
pursuit of learning, and tilling the soil of Italy. In 
fact, the strong practical bent of the Roman mind pro- 
duced a type of asceticism essentially different to that 
of the mystic Oriental and the philosophic Greek. It 
was an asceticism with a purpose, instead of an asceti- 
cism which sought its end in the suppression of all 
that was human. Dean Milman, the author of the 
History of Latin Christianity., is no lover of monasti- 
cism in any form, but he gives its due praise to the 
best Western monasticism. "Western monasticisra," 
he says, " in its general character, v/as not the barren, 
idly laborious, or dreamy quietude of the East. It 
was industrious and productive : it settled colonies, 
preserved arts and letters, built splendid edifices, fer- 
tilized deserts. If it rent from the world the most 
powerful minds, having trained them by its stern disci- 
pline, it sent them back to rule the world. It continu- 
ally, as it were, renewed its youth, and kept up a 
constant infusion of vigorous life ; now quickening into 
enthusiasm, now darkening into fanaticism, and by its 
perpetual rivalry stimulating the zeal or supplying the 
deficiencies of the secular clergy. In successive ages it 



80 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

adapted itself to the state of the human mind. At first 
a missionary to barbarous nations, it built abbeys, hewed 
down forests, cultivated swamps, enclosed domains, re- 
trieved or won for civilization tracts which had fallen 
into waste or had never known culture. With St. 
Dominic it turned its missionary zeal upon Christianity 
itself, and spread as a preaching order throughout Chris- 
tendom ; with St. Francis it became even more popular, 
and lowered itself to the very humblest of mankind."' 
And again he speaks of Western monasticism "as the 
missionary of what was holy and Christian in the new 
civilization ; as the chief maintainer, if not the restorer, 
of agriculture in Italy ; as the cultivator of the for- 
ests and morasses of the north; as the apostle of the 
heathen who dwelt beyond the pale of the Western 
empire." 

In a word, it w\as characteristic of Eastern monasti- 
cism to content itself with the morbid desire to repress 
the affections and to save the soul of the individual 
monk ; it was characteristic of the Western asceticism 
that it associated men together, schooled them, and 
disciplined them by a life of regulated self-denial, 
so as to make them available for high and useful 
purposes. 

This very rough and inadequate survey of different 
types of asceticism has been made witli the purpose 
of leading up to principles; and it should be borne in 
mind that, in all that has been said, only general ten- 



THE IDEAL OF ASCETICISM. 81 

dencies have l^eeii indicated, and the description of 
monasticism in these different forms is only true in 
the broad. 

Tlie principle I would now wish to state is this : 
asceticism is true or false, good or bad, according as 
it is what may be called athletic (following a well- 
known metaphor of St. Paul), or dualistic. This 
needs explanation. And first, what is dualism ? Dual- 
ism is a system of thought which builds itself on the 
eternal antagonism of two principles, one good and the 
other bad. Its most obvious form is that which per- 
vades Oriental philosophies and religions. It teaches 
that matter is inherently and essentially bad. Only 
spirit can be inherently and essentially good. The 
bod}^ or the flesh, is hopelessly and unquestionably 
bad ; the soul, in so far as it can be freed from the 
flesh, is good. The object and aim of existence is, 
therefore, to crush and ill-use the body, and restrain as 
far as possible every bodily want and appetite, however 
innocent. Tliis system of thought existed in Persia 
and India centuries before the appearance of Chris- 
tianity. It is sometimes known as " Manichaeisra," 
because in Christian times a Persian heretic named 
Manes developed it, and endeavored, with partial 
success, to infect Christianity with it. It is to be 
observed that ]\Ianich8eism does not teach simply that 
the flesh is evil when over-indulged, or that such and 
such an act is evil if carried to excess, but that the 



82 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

act is under all circumstances hopelessly wrong. Mar- 
riage, to the Oriental dualist, is as wrong as what is 
generally recognized as immoralit3^ Eating and drink- 
ing are only to be just tolerated because suicide is 
wrong, and a man is bound to keep himself alive. 
This kind of thought is ever reappearing, and the 
moralist has ever to be on his watch against it. It is 
to be found in the Puritanism which forbids absolutely/ 
certain pleasures, such as music and dancing, innocent 
in themselves, and only wrong when carried to excess, 
or prostituted to low uses. An illustration of it is to 
be found even now among a certain class of temper- 
ance advocates, who hold that to touch a drop of in- 
toxicating liquor is under all circumstances sinful. 
Such a system of thought is pernicious, not only be- 
cause it is in itself false, but because in history it has 
always been known to produce violent reactions into 
the opj^osite extremes of vice and license. It is a 
demon which has been exorcised over and over again, 
but which is ever reappearing. Now, it is the asceti- 
cism which founds itself on principles such as these, 
which is bad. It makes a vain attempt to eradicate 
natural appetites and affections which are given to 
mankind for a certain purpose, and are only bad when 
uncontrolled and indulged under unlawful circum- 
stances. Christians who are misled into an asceticism 
of this type are false to their own principles ; for they 
forget that the God whom they serve created t)ie body 



THE IDEAL OF ASCETICISM. 83 

as well as the soul, and that the Son of God has dig- 
nified the body by living an incarnate life. It was 
only the extreme wickedness and degradation that re- 
sulted from the decay of a great civilization which 
made sucli an asceticism possible in the Christian 
church. Certain numbers of early Christians, flying 
in horror from the revolting immorality of the world 
about them, ran into this opposite extreme. A better 
type of monasticism did, as has been shown, grow up ; 
but monasticism has hardly ever been wholly free 
from this Manichaean taint. 

It is characteristic, also, of a monasticism thus tainted, 
that it holds strange and false theories as to the raeri- 
toriousness of acts of self-denial and mortification. 
Such acts come to be regarded, not merely as part of 
a discipline intended to school the individual for cer- 
tain noble ends, but as in themselves meritorious. So 
much mortification will buy off so much purgatory 
hereafter. A certain amount of needless pain suf- 
fered on earth acquires thus a commercial value, and 
represents so much purchasing power for pleasure in 
heaven. 

The asceticism based on a good principle I have 
called athletic, and for this reason. Asceticism is a 
word derived from the Greek word, ao-KT^o-is (askesis), 
which means " training," or " practice," and generally 
athletic training. So athletic asceticism is, in fact, 
an asceticism which is true to its name. It treats the 



84 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

bod}', not as something inherently evil, but as an instru- 
ment, a useful servant given for high purposes ; but to 
be carefully kept in order lest it become the master; 
to be kept in good trim for its master's use. " I keep 
under my body and bring it into subjection," says St. 
Paul ; or, more literally, " I buffet my body and lead it 
about as a slave." According to this principle, the body 
is to be disciplined, not crushed ; the whole man is to 
be developed ; nothing is in itself to be called common 
or unclean. The bad asceticism tried vainly to crush the 
bodil}' affections, family ties, and the intellect. Tiie good 
asceticism seeks to control by inflexible but rational 
laws the bodily affections, to sanctify family ties, and to 
consecrate the intellect to the highest possible pursuits. 
It is difficult to imagine a character more opposed to 
the bad asceticism than that of Gerard in The Cloister 
and the Hearth. His nature is all aglow with family 
affections of a iioble type, as seen in his love for his 
parents, and in his pure passion for INIargaret. His 
artistic sensibilities are keen and highly trained ; and he 
is drawn to the church, not only by his deep piety, but 
by his strong scholarly instincts, which make him such 
a delightful character to study. The course of reckless 
vice through which he went in Rome, and the opposite 
extreme of fantastic asceticism by which he tried to 
master himself in the cave at Gouda, were but episodes, 
bad dreams, brouglit about by strong revulsions of 
feeling which temporarily overmastered him. 



THE IDEAL OF ASCETICISM. 85 

There is a good deal of hard hitting at monks and 
tlieir ways in the book ; but it should be remembered 
that the monastic system is shown in its pages to pro- 
duce its attractive as well as its hard and relentless 
characters — its Anselm as well as its Jerome ; and it 
did much in a dark and turbulent age for the protection 
and propagation of learning and scholarship, without 
which Gerard and Magnus Erasmus could never have 
lived before us, the one in fiction, and the other in 
history. 

But the object of the book is, of course, to write down 
the celibacy of the clergy. We should know that well 
enough without that infelicitous sentence and dread- 
ful foot-note before alluded to ; but we must return to 
them for a moment to see how our subject of the ascetic 
ideal is affected by the question of the celibacy of the 
clergy. Charles Reade states his case in too summary 
and hasty a fashion. He forgets that there were sound 
and rational motives at work, as well as unsound and 
mistaken ones, among those who brought about the 
enforced celibacy of the clergy in the Latin Church. 
There is a distinct call for celibate clergy, for certain 
purposes. In certain spheres of the church's work, es- 
pecially in missionary work, and in some parts of large 
cities, the work of celibate priests will be obviously 
more effective, more free and unhampered, than that of 
married clergy, with the impediments of a wife and 
family. A man who takes up this class of work must 



86 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

be like a soldier equipped for active service, and he 
will be missing his vocation if he does anything to 
make himself a less effective instrument for the work. 
He is called to greater self-denial than other men. But 
any system which teaches that marriage is essentially a 
lower state than celibacy, and therefore requires that 
those who are employed for sacred functions must not 
so far degrade themselves as to marry, is but involved 
once again in the oft-exorcised dualism, and is confound- 
ing things wrong in themselves with things wrong only 
under certain circumstances. Such teachins: is tainted 
with the old poison of Manichaeism over again, which 
takes a low view of marriage, making it only less bad 
than direct immorality. 

No asceticism is true which does not contemplate the 
develo]3ment of the whole man in the best and fullest 
sense. It will not trample what is merely earthly, 
but it recognizes the need of discipline in the inter- 
ests of something higher. The lower nature is to 
be kept rigorously under control; to be denied and 
repressed when its assertion conflicts with the higher, 
and demands a satisfaction which circumstances make 
unlawful. For, after all, asceticism is but the proper 
recognition of a higher element than that which is 
merely animal ; and therefore will not allow an un- 
regulated or excessive pursuit of any pleasure, how- 
ever innocent it may be in itself. It is the call to 
sacrifice. Robert Browning has some noble, but char- 



THE IDEAL OF ASCETICISM. 87 

acteristically awkward expressions on tlie subject in 
Rabbi Ben Ezra : — 

" Poor vaunt of life indeed 
Were man but formed to feed 
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast; 
Such feasting ended, then 
As sure an end to men; 

Irks care the crop-full bird ? Frets doubt the 
maw-crammed beast ? 

Then v.'elcome each rebuff 
That turns earth's smoothness rough. 
Each sting that bids, nor sit, nor stand, but go! 
Be our joy three-parts pain ! 
Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge 
the throe." 

To sum up — the ideal asceticism is not a useless mor- 
tification pursued for its own ends, but a discipline with 
a purpose in view. The ascetic may, in certain circum- 
stances, be called to give up certain family ties ; but he 
will not consider that the isolated act is in itself merito- 
rious, and he ^Y\\\ not underrate or take a low view of 
family ties for others ; while recognizing the tempta- 
tions of the flesh when undisciplined, he will not insult 
his body by needless or purposeless severities. A young 
Northumbrian poet has stated the case well. To a 
Northumbrian audience it will be of interest to state 
his name. It is Lord Warkworth, who has this year 
carried off the Newdigate prize at Oxford with a poem 
on St. Francis d'Assisi, distinctly above the ordinary 



88 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

level of prize compositions. Dealing with the well- 
known story of St. Francis's vision of the stigmata or 
marks of Christ's passion, he puts these words into the 
mouth of the saint : — 

— " Then I understood 
The vision: ' In my flesh should I see God," — 
That flesh which I had deemed the prison-cell 
That clogs th' aspiring soul ; th' unlovely shell 
That hides the young life of the tender grain, 
Shall in transfigured beauty robe again 
The ripened ears of harvest! Strange it were, 
Did pain please God, who made His world so fair! 
They serve Him best whose kindled spii-its move 
In perfect cadence with His life of love." 

C. G. Hall. 



ESSAYS 



CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN "ROMOLA" 



^. 



"■-•A, ^^•^-*ss 




'-" . «^«^. 



•- ^\ 



CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN ^'ROMOLA" 



The great purpose of George Eliot in Romola is to 
show the effect of circumstance upon the development 
of the human character. 

We may first turn aside to note other illustrations of 
character development. A young man, who has hitherto 
been the acknowledged pattern of the village, in an evil 
hour gives way to temptation, and finally becomes more 
dissolute and dangerous than all his neighbors. This 
is character developmetit, — a character not assumed or 
acted, but real and cultivated. 

Who has not trembled as he has sat within the soul 
of Lady Macbeth while the terrible storm is accumulat- 
ing ? She has only succeeded in acting a character, 
she has not developed one. She has taken intoxicating 
drink, and temporarily succeeded in paralyzing her 
higher self ; but that artificial influence has gone, and 
the old character remains inexorable. Although oppor- 
tunity has inflamed a long smouldering ambition, that 
ambition has failed to call to its aid any embryonic 
character germs. The higher must not live, the lower 
nature will not germinate ; and that which haj^pens is 

91 



92 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

just what must happen under the circumstances. Reason 
resigns her seat in the conflict. 

The more we think of the vibrations produced by- 
tempting circumstance upon our own moi-al natures, 
the more we realize the truth of George Eliot's philos- 
ophy, and the subtlety of her intellect. Silas Marner 
creeps away from society in general ; it seems to him 
that the world is so incomprehensibly big and myste- 
riously peopled. Under an altered environment his 
social and religious proclivities give way to imbecile 
selfislmess. While his character thus hardens into ab- 
stract avarice, the living world seems to have no exis- 
tence for him, except as a mj^sterious monster that gives 
him gold for labor. But his gold at length is stolen 
from him, and now there is nothing for that silent heart 
to love in silence. For a heart that has the germs of 
love in it, and fails to find another heart to recipro- 
cate affection, will waste its sweetness upon the inani- 
mate, or it will burst. So it was with Silas. Sally — 
faithless Sally — first opened her heart to his love, but 
shut it again ; and Ave find that when Sally is no more to 
him his affection becomes transfused to love of wealth. 
But another accident occurs. A little child, whose 
mother lies dead in the snow, totters into the cottage 
of Silas just at the moment when life seems most in 
tolerable. And what happens ? From that moment 
poverty becomes bliss. Here at once is a substitute 
in a living reality for the lost gold. And no hand 



CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN '' ROM OLA." 93 

better than George Eliot's could have shown how won- 
derfully, yet naturally, the buried germs of a long-dead 
life bloom forth under the influence of this child, and 
how Silas tastes the fulness of a great character in his 
old age. 

It is always the story of a soul she tells. We are in- 
stantly enveloped in a pyschological atmosphere ; for 
while some writers keep one in the outer world, and 
give only in lightning flashes furtive glances into the 
inner life, she takes us there, and there we remain, and 
thence look out upon the surface of existence. Who 
has not felt as though he dwelt really within the of- 
fended soul of Gwendolen, who married foi' gold and 
position, expecting thereby to pacify a soul left celibate ? 
But outward ease did not bring into peace ; the light- 
some innocence of her character becomes displaced, and 
dark and hitherto unsuspected thoughts take possession 
of her whole being, bubbling forth unbidden, as in- 
stincts do. 

In Silas Marner, beautiful and complete in itself as 
it is, we have only the preface, to which Romola is the 
accomplished fact. While Silas Marner is perfect in its 
simplicity, Romola is great in its complexity. We must 
remember the stupendous historic background of the 
story — Florence with all her ancient grandeur, her 
teeming inhabitants with their cries of joy, of pain, of 
hope, of revenge; and above all is heard the clarion 
voice of Savonarola rushinsr througrh the Florentine 



94 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

soul like a mad river. All this gigantic background 
is conjured up to show — what? The evolution of one 
beautiful life ! 

Great and good people always leave their souls 
behind them, whether it be in statuary, or books, 
or deeds. George Eliot has left her living soul with 
Romola. A statue is left by a master — a statue with a 
soul in it, that makes us feel when we look upon it as 
though we were in the presence of an extraordinary 
being. Its eyes are stone, yet they gaze down into the 
deep recesses of our being ; no affection can be forced 
upon it, no secret can be hidden from its sight ; we dare 
not touch its garment, nor utter nor think an unholy 
thought in its presence. As such a statue is Romola 
introduced to us. Her silence is greater than elo- 
quence, and her coldness comes of holiness. She is 
rigid, yet as sensitive as the sensitive plant. She is 
touched by love, — blind love, — and the whole mechan- 
ism of a great character is set in motion. She is 
touched by falsehood, and she seems to return to marble 
again. Romola's inward beauties are developed in ad- 
versity and sorrow. She wrestles with her poorer self; 
Tito wrestles with his higher self. Tito deals out his 
soul to evade unpleasant duties, only to find that the 
unperformed remain everlasting debts that accumulate 
and increase unhappiness, until finally all pleasure is 
swallowed up, and life becomes a wide, trackless waste 
of misery^ 



CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN '' ROMOLA^ 95 

There are turning-points in all our lives — there are 
"currents" that must be taken when they "serve," or 
the most important opportunity of our life is lost. 
There is often much that is unpleasant to perform ere 
we taste a morsel of real happiness. Pleasures often 
come only from outward satisfaction ; happiness can 
only come from the soul. Happiness once attained 
owes much of its sweetness to the pain that has been 
experienced in the struggle to obtain it; for, as it is 
stated in the proem to Romola : — 

" Little children are still the symbol of the eternal mar- 
riage between love and duty ; " 

and — 

'' Life to be highest must be made up of conscious vol- 
untary sacrifice." 

Here is Tito at a point where lanes meet and diverge. 
This way is thorny, but the soul says, " Go ; " the 
other way is apparently pleasant, but it leads to ruin. 
We find him saying : — 

" Can any philosophy prove to me that I was bound to 
care for another's sufferings more than for my own ? . . . 
The world belongs to youth and strength, and these glories 
are his who can extract more pleasures out of them. . . . 
Baldazzar has had his draught of life ; ... it is my turn 
now." 

Thus we find that, when the presiding will of his 
father sits no longer over him, Tito's character finds 



96 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

its polarity in selfishness, and we have the first and 
all-important glimmer of Tito in an undi'eamed-of 
character. 

It is interesting to watch how with wondrous rapid- 
ity these newly awakened germs develop, whilst those 
which lay uppermost in his character as hitherto known 
just as rapidly drop out of activity. His unconquer- 
able love of self, his horror of unpleasant duties, grad- 
ually crush the higher manhood out of him. The 
communings with the soul become less and less pro- 
tracted. Desire becomes the master of conscience; and 
the embodiment of truth which he once reverenced in 
Romola becomes now the personification of an inexor- 
able Nemesis. Twin sisters are cowardice and selfish- 
ness — while selfishness is ever directing the nervous 
fingers of avarice, cowardice puts in every crevice of 
thought a skeleton. 

Yet Romola is not perfect ; she, too, has her antipathy 
to painful duties. But while he shrinks from duty be- 
cause of its unpleasantness, and is conscious of the 
unrighteousness, she turns from duty through igno- 
rance. 

Romola has been reared in a world of dead wisdom, 
yet she has sucked in truth. She knows the book of 
life only as it has been translated. Tito came to her 
with his living smiles and his love as a revelation. 
But truth has gone from him. and she can no longer 
love him ; and loveless cohabitation is to her the lowest 



CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN '' ROMOLA:' 97 

depth of degradation. She would fly from falsehood 
because her soul abhors it, and live a death in life. 
But the voice of Savonarola arrests her ; and, while she 
fancies that hitherto the deepest reaches of her soul 
have been self-sounded, she is convinced ere long that 
that which she accepted as holiness in the abstract was 
not unsmitten by selfishness. 

'' What has your dead wisdom done for j^ou, my daugh- 
ter ? It has left you without a heart for the neighbours 
among whom you dwell. . . . When the sword has pierced 
your side, you say, I will go away ; I cannot bear my sor- 
row. . . . You would leave your place empty, Avhen it 
ought to be filled with your pity and j^our labour. If there 
is wickedness in the streets, your steps should shine with 
light and purity ; if there is a cry of anguish, you, my 
daughter, because you know the meaning of it, ought to be 
there to still it. . . . Sorrow has come to teach you a new 
religion. . . . My daughter, every bond of life is a debt ; 
the right lies in the payment of that debt — it can lie 
nowhere else." 

And so it does. Is it not in this tendency in human 
character to fly from the unpleasant, and the bringing 
of it back again by liigher and more powerful influ- 
ences, that the hidden virtues of characters are often 
called into permanent activity? Truly, "no man or 
woman can choose their duties, any more than they 
can choose their father, or mother, or birthplace." 

Thus accident has given Romola another and a truer 
and wider view of human duties. She had hitherto 



98 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. . 

only known how sweet it was to be holy as defined in 
keeping one's self apart from that which is unholy. 
But holiness must now have no root in selfhood. 
"Father," she says, "I will be guided. Teach me. I 
will go back." Life, to be rightly lived, must not con- 
sist in doing no evil, like a statue in a busy thorough- 
fare, but in practising a religion that has few words 
and many deeds. There is no cathedral so beautiful as 
one white soul ; no organ so expressive as one honest 
voice ; and no religion more holy than one good deed. 
No man exists for himself alone, and a life has not ful- 
iilled its mission unless the happiness of the community 
is increased by it. There is no abstraction ; all are 
links to one great chain of conscious existence ; and if 
we sever ourselves, our strength is as naught to us, 
for we gain nothing, and the purpose of our life is 
then destroyed. 

As a stone thrown into a lake causes every drop of 
water to be affected, so an accidental circumstance may 
prove the turning-point, not of one, but of many lives. 
We have seen how Tito's accident became the begin- 
ning of a degenerate life — a starting-point to a most 
beautiful life is furnished in Romola. But in Baldaz- 
zer the case is different. There is no development of a 
sane or embryonic character ; intellectual darkness comes 
over it, relieved now and then with flashes of memory, 
like lightning in a midnight thunderstorm, making 
only two projections visible, — remorse and revenge. 



CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN ''ROM OLA.'' 99 

We have seen how beneath the magic influence of 
Savonarola the inward majesty of Romola's character 
comes out ; for during tlie pestilence, where there is a 
"cry of anguish," is she not there "to still it"? and 
where there is wickedness in the streets, do not " her 
steps shine with light and purity"? 

Yet another great change comes over Romola. The 
voice of Savonarola, which has hitherto swept through 
her soul like music that is more felt than heard, has. 
now lost its power. She has lost her faith in him ; and 
" with the sinking of human trust the dignity of life 
sinks too ; we cease to believe in our own better self, 
since that also is part of the common nature which is 
degraded in our thought ; and all finer influences of the 
soul are dulled." She longed for repose ; she was tired 
of the weary world ; she felt " the spring of her once 
active piety drying up," and again her egoism of self 
predominated. Her bonds that once bound her to Tito 
are beyond all power to reunite. " It is too late, Tito," 
she finally says, " there is no killing the suspicion that 
deceit has once begotten. ... I, too, am a human 
being. I have a soul of my own that abhors your 
actions. Our union is a pretence — as if a perpetual, 
lie could be a sacred marriag-e." 

Out of every difliculty Tito comes more degraded. 
His smile becomes slave to his base intrigues, and lines 
gather and deepen about his mouth. But every sorrow 
makes Romola more radiant. Her " barren eofoistic 



100 FOUR YEARS OF NOVEL-READING. 

complainings " drift her, not to selfish repose, but to the 
very place where a great soul is needed ; and the truth 
of Savonarola's words is beautifully confirmed : — 

" The draught is bitter on the lips. But there is a 
rapture in tlie cup — there is the vision that makes all 
life below it dross forever." 

Thomas Dawson. 



ENGLISH. 



73 



The Literary Study of the Bible. 

An Account of the Leading Forms of Literature represented in the Sacred Writings. 
Intended for English Readers. By Richard G. Moulton. University Ex- 
tension Professor of Enghsh Literature in the University of Chicago ; late Ex- 
tension Lecturer in Literature to Cambridge University (England), and to the 
London and the American Societies for the Extension of University Teaching. 
Author of " Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist," " The Ancient Classical Drama," 
etc. CLth. 000 pages. Retail price, ^o.oo. 

THIS work is founded on the experience of University Extension 
Courses delivered during tliree years in various parts of England 
and America, in connection with universities or with churches of all 
denominations. 

It deals with the Bible as literature, without reference to theological 
or distinctively religious matters on the one hand, or on the other hand 
to the historical analysis which has come to be known as " tlie higher 
criticism." With a view to the general reader it endeavors to bring 
out the literary interest of Scripture, so often obscured by reading in 
verses or short fragments. For -the professed student of literature it 
has the further purpose of discussing methodically such literary forms 
as eiMc, lyric, dramatic, etc., so far as they appear in one of the 
world's great literatures. It assumes that the English Bible is a 
supreme classic, the thorough study of which must form a part of all 
liberal education. 

Contents : 

Introduction : The Book of Job, and the various kinds of literary 
interest represented by it. Book I : First Principles of Literary classi- 
fication illustrated from Sacred Literature. Book II : Lyric Poetry of 
the Bible. Book III : Biblical History and Epic. Book IV : The 
Philosophy of the Bible, or Wisdom Literature. Book V : Biblical 
Literature of Prophecy. Book VI : Biblical Literature of Rhetoric. 
Appendix : Tables intended as a manual for Bible reading from the 
literary point of view. [Ready in April. 

History and Literature in Grammar Grades. 

By J. H. Phillips, Superintendent Public Schools, Birmingham, Ala. Paper. 
19 pages. Retail price, 15 cents. (Monographs on Education Series.) 

DISCUSSES past and present methods of teaching these branches, 
and suggests improvements. 



58 



ENGLISH. 



American Literature. 

An Elementary Text-Book for use in High Schools and Colleges. By Julian 
Hawthorne and Leonard Lemmon, Supt. of Schools, Sherman, Texas. 
Cloth. Illustrated. 319 pages. Introduction price, ^i. 12. Price by mail, $1.25. 

THIS book is prepared in the light of modern metliods of teaching 
literature. No other volume approaches it in the number and 
value of its poetical selections from copyrighted matter. These 
selections are taken from our best known poets ; and, appended, are 
studies of these selections and of the authors' whole product ; and 
as these exercises are new in this kind of volume they will undoubtedly 
be warmly welcomed by teachers. 

The authors have taken special pains with the grouping and arrange- 
ment of the volume, and have tried to make the book an organic, liv- 
ing structure ; to make the authors treated appear as living persons to 
the pupils ; to give the pupil a comprehension of the nature of the 
authors' mind and genius, of what they tried to accomplish and how 
near they came to accomplishing it. They have tried to keep the pupil 
reminded, concurrently, of the general historical situation during the 
various literary periods, and how the literature was affected thereby; 
and of the political or other references that aided to give bias and 
tone to literary productions. The book aims to stimulate the pupil's 
thought rather than tax his memory. \S end for our special circular. 

James R. Truax, Prof, of English 
Latiguage and Literature, Union Col- 
lege, N. Y. : It is refreshing to find a 
work like this that exhibits a just idea of 
proportion. This book is a valuable 
guide to those in search of the best in 
literature. 

J. M. Greenwood, Sitft. Pub. Schs., 
Kansas City, Mo.: It contains more solid 
sense to the square inch on American 
authors than all the other books written 
in this country. 

W. S. Eversole, Suft. Public 
Schools, Woostcr, O. : It is a thoroughly 
interesting and stimulating book. 

London Literary World : It is 
more than a school book : it is in itself a 
valuable addition to American literature. 



A. K. Goudy . State Supt., Nebraska: 
The book is certainly one deserving com- 
mendation and is highly appreciated by 
this department and will receive personal 
recommendations to our teachers. 

C. A. Whiting, Prof, of Literature, 
University of Deseret, Salt Lake City : 
I think it the finest work on the subject I 

have e-ver seen. 

W. C. Sawyer, University or the 
Pacific, Cal. : I find it so fresh and well 
adapted to an outline course that I shall 
use it next term. 

Thos. Hume, Uttiv. of North Caro- 
li?ia : I have been the means of having it 
used by a class of eighty-four preparatory 
students. 



ENGLISH LITERATURE, 

Hawthorne and Lemmon's American Literature. A manual for high schools 

and academies. J1.25. 

Meiklejohn's History of English Language and Literature. For high schools 

and colleges. A compact and reliable statement of the essentials ; also included ia 
Meiklejohn's English Language (see under English Language). 90 cts. 

Meiklejohn's History of English Literature. ii6 pages. Part iv of English 

Literature, above. 45 cts. 

Hodgkius' Studies in English Literature. Gives full lists of aids for laboratory 

method Scott, Lamb, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Macaulayi 
Dickens, Thackeray, Robert Browning, Mrs. Brownin?, Carlyle, George Eliot, Tenny- 
son, Rossetti, Arnold, Ru?kin, Irving, Bryant, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emerson, 
Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell. A separate pamphlet on each author. Price 5 cts. each, 
or per hundred, J-j.oo; complete in cloth (adjustable file cover, $1.50). $1.00. 

Scudder's Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, with introduction and copious 

notes. 70 cts. 

George's Wordsworth's Prelude. Annotated for high school and college. Never 
before published alone. .Si. 25. 

George's Selections from Wordsworth. i68 poems chosen with a view to illustrate 

the growth of the poet's mind and art. ;?i.5o. 

George's Wordsworth's Prefaces and Essays on Poetry. Contains the best of 

Wordsworth's prose. 60 cts. 
George's Webster's Speeches. Nine select speeches with notes. $1.50. 

George's Burke's American Orations. Cloth. 65 cts. 

George's Syllabus of English Literature and History. Shows in parallel 

columns, the progress of History and Literature. 20 cts. 

Corson's Introduction to Browning. A guide to the study of Browning's Poetry. 
Also has 33 poems with notes. ^1.50. 

Corson's Introduction to the Study of Shakespeare, a critical study of 

Shakespeare's art, with examination questions. ^1.50. 

Corson's Introduction to the Study of Milton, in press. 
Corson's Introduction to the Study of Chaucer, in press 

Cook's Judith. The Old English epic poem, with introduction, translation, glossary and 
fac-simile page. J1.60. Students' edition without translation. 35 cts. 

Cook's The Bible and English Prose Style. Approaches the study of the Bible 

from the literary side. 60 cts. 

Simonds' Sir Thomas Wyatt and his Poems. i68 pages. With biography, and 

critical analysis of his poems. 75 cts. 

Hall's Beowulf. A metrical translation, ^i.oo. Students' edition. 35 cts, 

Norton's Heart of Oak Books. A series of five volumes giving selections from the 
choicest English liter.iture. 

Phillips's History and Literature in Grammar Grades. An essay sho%ving the 

intimate relation of the two subjects. 15 cts. 

See also our list of books for the study of tJie English Language. 



D, C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS. 

BOSTON. NEW YORK. CHICAGO. 



ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 



Hyde's Lessons in English, Book I. For the lower grades. Contains exercises 
for reproduction, picture lessons, letter writing, uses of parts of speech, etc. 40 cts. 

Hyde's Lessons in English, Book II. For Grammar schools. Has enough tech- 
nical grammar for correct use of language. 60 cts. 

Hyde's Lessons in English, Book II with Supplement. Has, in addition 

to the above, iiS pages of technical grammar. 70 cts. 
Supplement bound alone, 35 cts. 

Hyde's Advanced Lessons in English. For advanced classes in grammar schools 
and high schools. 60 cts. 

Hyde's Lessons in English, Book II with Advanced Lessons. The Ad- 
vanced Lessons and Book II bound together. 80 cts. 

Hyde's Derivation of Words. 15 cts. 

Mathews's Outline of English Grammar, with Selections for Practice. 

The application of principles is made through composition of original sentences. 80 cts. 
Buckbee'S Primary Word Book. Embraces thorough drills in articulation and in 
the primary difficulties of spelling and sound. 30 cts. 

Sever'S Progressive Speller. For use in advanced primary, intermediate, and gram- 
mar grades. Gives spelling, pronunciation, definition, and use of words. 30 cts. 

Badlam's Suggestive Lessons in Language. Being Part I and Appendix of 

Suggestive Lessons in Language and Reading. 50 cts. 

Smith's Studies in Nature, and Language Lessons. A combination of object 

lessons with language work. 50 cts. Part I bound separately, 25 cts. 

MeiklejOhn'S English Language. Treats salient features with a master's skill and 
with the utmost clearness and simplicity. $1.30. 

MeiklejOhn'S English Grammar. Also composition, versification, paraphrasing, etc. 
For high schools and colleges, go cts. 

MeiklejOhn'S History of the English Language. 78 pages. Part in of Eng- 
lish Language above, 35 cts. 

Williams's Composition and Rhetoric by Practice. For high school and coi- 

lege. Combines the smallest amount of theory with an abundance of practice. Revised 
edition. ;pi.oo. 

Strang's Exercises in English. Examples in Syntax, Accidence, and Style for 
criticism and correction. 50 cts. 

HufEcutt'S English in the Preparatory School. Presents as practically as pos- 
sible some of the advanced methods of teaching English grammar and composition in the 
secondary schools. 25 cts. 

WOOdv/ard's Study of English. Discusses English teaching from primary school to 
high collegiate work. 25 cts. 

Genung'S Study of Rhetoric. Shows the most practical discipUne of students for the 
making of liierature. 25 cts. 

GOOdchild'S Book of Stops. Punctuation in Verse. Illustrated. 10 cts. 
See also our list of books for the study of English Liierature. 



D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS, 

BOSTON. NEW YORK. CHICAGO. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date; Jan. 2009 

Preservationlechnologjes 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 



